


Kingdom of the Blind

by cykelops



Category: Dishonored (Video Games), Marvel, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Characters Added As They Appear - Freeform, Multi, Multiple pairings mentioned but not the focus of the story, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-03-28 13:09:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13904676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cykelops/pseuds/cykelops
Summary: An injury forced Scott Summers to return to the city where he was raised before he was ready. The only silver lining, the one thing he wanted, was to see the love of his life again. Jean Grey has kept on living without him, but there is still a place for him in her life, if maybe not in her heart.Under the constriction of his duty, he chases and captures a powerful witch named Logan, for whom his superior officer has mysterious plans.The three of them are entwined, whether by chance or fate, but they might be too different to hold fast.





	1. more haste, less speed

**Author's Note:**

> JEAN/SCOTT/LOGAN POLY RELATIONSHIP WILL BE ENDGAME.  
> An Alternate Universe featuring characters from Marvel's X-Men and the world of Bethesda's Dishonored. Inspired by Dishonored: The Corroded Man Trilogy and Dishonored: The Dunwall Archives. For X-Men fans unfamiliar with the title, it's a first-person stealth game set in a steampunk-style world.  
> No part of this would have ever gotten out if it wasn't for the encouragement of some wonderful friends. This is strictly for fun, and very self indulgent, and I will be very pleased if anyone sticks around to read it. Thank you ♥

**1**

**DISTILLERY DISTRICT, DUNWALL**

**_5th day, Month of High Cold, 1851_ **

“The infinite nature of our universe—as it has been revealed to me—is voluntarily repetitive. Familiarity begets comfort even in the inhuman forces that govern all reality. We were simply meant to live in close proximity, victims of a cross-dimensional magnetism, and some of us could not help but meet."

— MINDS OF HIGH SOCIETY

Excerpt taken from Emma Frost’s private journal.

 

* * *

 

Scott Summers had been forced to leave Tyvia. 

That wasn't the exact truth of it, but it was close enough. For the past two years of his life, which was in itself twenty-three years long, he had been stationed in the city of Dabovka, home to the Citadel, the People’s Chamber, and most importantly: the Gristol Embassy. 

He was part of an outreach effort on behalf of the Abbey of Everyman from the city of Dunwall, the heart of the Empire in Gristol. Due to Tyvia’s exemplary performance during an insurrection, they had been awarded more independence than neighboring Morley and distant Serkonos. The Tyvian Princes were replaced by democratically elected High Judges, and Tyvia withdrew from the world stage. Cultural dissonance built between the isles, the Abbey of Everyman and its Warfare Overseers were pushed out until they held little presence in Tyvia. Tyvia considered Gristol overly superstitious, seeing shadows at every corner.  _ Speak of The Witness and he shall appear. _ The High Judges’ Operators—state secret police, shouldered the duties of Overseers in the region. The Empire might have granted Tyvia autonomy, but the Abbey had not.  

Scott had Tyvian papers. His parents left him at the orphanage absent their names, but not his documents. A small kindness, to be sure, and the only thing he knew of them. It expedited the process and made for a good byword: the Abbey was not invading Tyvia, it was returning its lost sons. The Tyvian government insisted on taking only recruits with similar loyalties; Tyvian immigrants and converts to the Order,  _ no  _ agents raised from birth in Dunwall. Scott barely met the criteria.

Tyvia was cold country, colder than anything he could have imagined. It was engulfed in darkness half the year and stuck to Gristol’s calendar for symbolic purposes, not practical. Every month was the Month of High Cold, every month was the Month of Hearths. 

He was stationed within the Citadel, alongside a unit of Operators led by one Illyana Rasputina. He had his own men, but it was his job to offer peaceful cooperation to Rasputina’s unit in exchange for help navigating the area and local customs.  In the years he was there, Illyana never so much as passed him the salt at the table. He got the feeling she approved of him, but not his vocation. 

She resented the idea heretics required a different kind of police than regular folk. Witches, she said, were as normal as him or her. He found many Tyvians were of the same mind and learned to curb the urge to preach where it wasn’t wanted. He kept a copy of the Scriptures in a palm-sized, leather-bound book hooked to his belt, and he had a habit of thumbing the spine when he spoke about witchcraft with her. Rasputina was lively, friendly, but she was difficult to work with for her countrymen, even more so for a foreigner. 

He had extended information about his Tyvian birthright like an olive branch, with the intent to reassure her. She had laughed in his face. He might be Tyvian in flesh and blood, that he could endure the winter without sniveling was proof of it, but he was still a foreigner. “ _ Summers, _ ” she joked, when they’d speculated about the cause for his parents’ immigration. “ _ There are no summers in Tyvia. _ ”

_ Long  _ story short, Scott Summers was a specialized witch hunter in a nation that had long decided it didn't need any. 

He proved himself by slipping out of Illyana’s shadow and building his own network of little old ladies and fences that could be bought for a copper. It could not compare to her’s, but it would not leave his hands idle. He combated petty crimes by witchcraft standards, ranging from dismantling a shopkeeper’s supply of seal tusk bonecharms to stripping shrines of their bright red banners and straw dolls. He was considered needlessly thorough, but after his devotion to his work stopped Secretary Helga’s daughter from losing her head over a magic circle at the hands of an overzealous boyfriend, no one minded his intensity.

He’d garnered the respect of his peers even if he hadn’t managed to combine their efforts. That would have taken many more years than he was granted. 

As luck would have it, the first true witch he’d found in Davobka would mark the end of his stay on the Citadel. The Pleasure District was her hunting ground, and for every brothel littered around the square she left behind a victim. The men, late in their years, had each deep, deep pockets and sadistic natures. They were cantankerous, short-tempered, and quick to violence, especially towards the working girls. Scott had been called in by the proprietors of the establishments she’d visited and found the men on their knees with their arms locked behind their back, eyes glazed, drooling over the diamonds growing out of their jowls like fungus on rotted lumber. Despite their hollow stares, he was promised by the witch’s letter that it felt every bit as painful as it looked.

He would not mourn the loss of their ilk, but he did not wish their death on anyone. Their teeth had turned to crystals first, tearing through flesh like fangs and glittering like freshly fallen snow. The growths spread down their chests, sprung from their ribcage like pincushion petals, and reached as far as their hips before the blood loss killed them. After a visit to the High Physician and a turn for every man under the knife, Scott learned the magic stemmed from the bonecharms she’d fed them.

As witchcraft was involved, and very powerful witchcraft at that, it was his responsibility to stop her. She was fulfilling her own justice and he respected that. He still had a job to do, in service of the Abbey and the Crown, thousands of miles away from both. Their chase lasted months and it wasn’t long before the papers caught wind. A foreigner and a witch. Raunchy novels had been written about less, and given the nature of her crimes, it wasn’t long before the papers begun to pay lip service to every lecherous conspiracy. 

They played guessing games with her identity. She was the daughter of a High Judge. A mother out for revenge. A  _ madame  _ of old, made young by her magic, seeking to rebuild a climate where men were more chivalrous to the girls that entertained them. And an obscure favorite: She was Scott Summers’ archenemy, pursuing him to the edge of the world. 

He had known her well in those months she gave him the slip, and she knew him in turn. So well, indeed, she had lured him away from his men and struck when he least expected it. A blow to the back of the head and he was face down in two inches of snow.

He didn’t want to think about the White Queen, or the night he’d chased her into the tundra. It didn’t matter anymore. He had been bed-bound for three days while they tried to bring warmth back to his blue lips. At the same time, she had been spotted leaving the isle, most likely headed for Morley. She was another Overseer’s problem then, and Scott had been placed on the next boat out to Gristol without his say so.

He had a  _ mild _ concussion, though he would later protest that diagnosis. It made the trip to Dunwall more miserable than it already was. Scott was prone to seasickness, and he would have vomited over the edge of the ship whether or not his blood pounded explosively between his ears. He could drag himself out of the cot he’d been placed in long enough to relieve himself, but fatigue drove him back to the limited comfort of his thin bedclothes. The journey should have taken days, but he could not attest to its length. He lost time sleeping and staring at the ceiling as his vision swam in circles. Sick and disoriented, he often forgot when he’d been fed or taken his medicine. On the three days he spent at sea he could not remember who had ordered his return or where he'd last seen his luggage. 

They continued by train the rest of the way to Dunwall and then by carriage inside the city walls. The sense started to come back to him shortly after disembarking, much as he didn't want to be in the presence of mind to think. His own men had reported him to the Abbey, explicitly disobeying his orders. Or rather, the one order he'd barked at one of them in a hoarse voice, one cold hand fisted in their shirt before he passed out. 

_ Do not tell Essex. _

The pounding headache lifted, slowing to the ordinary throb he associated with his migraines. Tyvia had been a most welcome reprieve in its darkness, and the sun of Gristol welcomed him in a wince. Scott was sensitive to light, the only repercussion to his mismatched eyes. It was a genetic curiosity, the Abbey made sure there was no magic involved, but new recruits could be as superstitious as fishwives, so Scott wore spectacles with red oval eyeglasses to discourage curious glances and filter the light. 

Spectacles he could not find. The box where he kept them and his goggles was gone. He feared them lost in the tundra during in his struggle with the White Queen. Scott’s lips thinned. His goggles must have cracked under his own weight, and the spectacles buried in the snow. The doctors likely discarded them when they stripped him. That left him with his mask, sitting untouched in its own case. 

Overseers of his rank could forego the Mask of En Sabah Nur. He took it off as quickly as it was acceptable for him to do so. The pallid face sharpened by navy lines disquieted him every time he crossed a mirror. He understood its purpose. By creating an order of faceless men En Sabah Nur had abolished their individual egos, made them into a cohesive force. After his death, the rules had slackened and the masks became a tool to strike fear into the hearts of heretics. Intimidation evened the playing field between those with and without magic. It was required for most low-level Overseers to wear them during shifts. The eyes of his mask were the same opaque shade of red as his glasses, and under a cloudless sky, he would not be his best self without it. He pulled it over his head. 

He tucked the back of the mask into his collar and adjusted his double-breasted grey jacket so the fabric would not bunch up beneath it. He had closed the curtains as soon as they’d passed the city gates, but the sounds from the street guided his mind through the city. He recognized the cries of whalers and steel workers beyond Munroe bridge, the high pitched giggles of merchants and courtesans set up in the streets between the Golden Cat and the local distillery. The High Overseer’s office was in uncomfortable proximity. 

Scott had not volunteered to go to Tyvia out of a sense of altruism. He was on a mission to prove himself. His guardian and High Overseer Nathaniel Essex was an overbearing man, of a… curious disposition — in kindest terms. He was eccentric and misunderstood. Rumors reached Scott’s ears about Nathaniel Essex and his physicians, what they got up to behind closed doors. Word of mouth alone could not be trusted to convey the appropriate context. 

Essex had shown him his laboratory because he truly had nothing to hide. The human screams, the blood, the smell of burnt flesh, it all came from Weepers —victims of the Rat Plague, nearly dead. Essex was a scientist as well as an Overseer. He was studying them so he might help others.  He trusted his mentor, his guardian. Nathaniel Essex had saved him from a life of poverty. He saw Scott’s true potential, nurtured it, but his paternal instincts would not allow Scott to surpass him.

Nathaniel Essex cast a wide shadow. He would never amount to anything if he remained under it. Essex would not approve his transfer, and Scott did not trust himself not to be convinced against it, so he did his paperwork through discrete channels, called in a few favors, and left Dunwall in the dead of night. Now here he was, with nothing to show for it except possibly a dent in his skull. 

But he left more than his guardian behind two years ago, it wasn’t only his disappointment that choked him.

His childhood had been difficult after his parents disappeared. He was a small child and a favored target for bullies. He had few friends and none of them like Miss Jean Grey. She was the daughter of the Lady who kept the place lit and the children fed, as his caretakers described her. She lived in a mansion across Munroe bridge and joined her mother on every visit. Nobles frequented the orphanage, mostly during the holiday season, but their children never wanted to play. Only Miss Jean Grey. 

He’d called her that until they were twelve years old and she pulled his ears until he promised to stop. They had known each other all their lives and shared the most private secrets twelve-year-olds could have. He was allowed to call her Jean, propriety be damned. 

That was the year he shot up a head taller than her, and his training with the Overseers filled him out until he wasn’t a small bag of skin stretched over awkwardly long bones. It wasn't enough to make him any more comfortable in his body. No one knew his faults like he did. He had abnormally large shoulders for such small hips. His hair could not decide which direction it was going to grow in, so long as none of it grew on his chest. He blushed frequently and indiscriminately, scaring his superior officers into fits when he overheated. Jean wrapped her arms around his neck, bumped her nose between his shoulder blades and said he was being silly. 

She made him believe none of it mattered because Jean never lied. If she liked this body, then he could learn to see the good things alongside the bad. 

He loved her with unspoken intensity. When they touched there was no power in his treacherous mind that could convince him she did not feel the same way. The Scriptures spoke no word against them, the book condemned loose unions that would not bear fruit, and against popular belief, Overseers could and did marry. He intended that much for them. Later, obviously, years after their engagement. When Jean had exhausted her coursework and become an acting physician with a steady income outside her family fortune. It would break a few societal expectations, but no laws, and what was youth without rebellion? 

Jean had enviable confidence in herself. If she wanted to seek out a career in medicine and succeed in it she could give doubters no quarter. She would be undoubtedly accomplished in her field.  _ That  _ was the problem. Not because of her, but because of him. 

A noblewoman and a doctor marrying a no-name Overseer would make things difficult for her. Her family would not be happy, and Jean loved her family. It was bad enough she wanted to leave home on her own, it would be worse if she left with a man they did not approve of. He needed power earned in his own right. He had no money, no title, and no land. All that would change if he rose through the ranks. Same as Essex, she would have convinced him to stay. He kept her in the dark until the very end.  

So. Tyvia. 

Two years, no correspondence. The more he thought about it the more it sounded like a fool’s errand. Hindsight was unbearably accurate. 

He was an idiot. He would be surprised if Jean even remembered his face. 

The carriage came to a sudden stop and he knew they had arrived. The driver pulled the door open without knocking and disappeared to bring his trunk from the back. Dread wormed in his gut. He thought about taking the driver’s seat before he could notice and rounding back towards the gate. He adjusted his embroidered sleeves in the meantime, checking himself over for wrinkles and other imperfections in the light. Scott climbed out onto the cobblestone path one steel-tipped boot at a time. 

Even without the early morning fog, Dunwall was drab and grey. Every residential building had the same worn staircase, cloudy glass windows, and sloping roofs, with unique missing bricks to differentiate them. They stood tall and close together like candles on a torte. The High Overseer’s office commanded En Sabah Nur Square, fenced in where it faced the street. The decorative purple banners bearing the mark of their order waved in the breeze, wet from yesterday’s rain. Behind the office lay the docks and the oil factory, spraying noxious waste into the air and water.  The end of every other street held a City Watch post, one man inside and another on patrol. They were as part of the landscape as the pipes wreathed around the biggest buildings like rusting ivy. 

Scott stepped over the gutters and onto the sidewalk. Dunwall was beautiful in its own way. It took some warming up to. Even with a modernist in charge, the Abbey was notoriously old-fashioned and commissioned only their own men to work construction in their territory. East of there, even only as far as the Golden Cat, things were much more picturesque. The Empress was a connoisseur of the arts, and she had ordered reconstruction of the low towns. Under her mother’s rule and the beginning of her own, she made the castle as beautiful as it was impenetrable. A modern marvel. A wonder of the world, right there at his doorstep. He would miss Tyvia’s sapphire skyline, but  _ this _ was home.

If he could still call it that.

He waited while the driver unloaded the rest of his things from inside the vehicle. He offered to help but was silently rebuked. The man had orders to bring it all inside where someone else would carry it to his room. He would just get in the way. Scott could not argue with that sentiment. He wasn't very nice, the driver, but Scott would still tip him when he was done. It helped him stall for time. He was expected in his guardian’s office for tea and an uncomfortable conversation. His greatest hope lay in that it would be cut short in time to rest and head to the Estate District after hours. 

“Hey, you! Didn't I tell you never to show your face in my city again?!” 

There was only one man in the world with the voice of a great bell, and it rang across the narrow street clear as diamonds. Scott followed the sound, turning away from the gates, a smile brimming behind his mask. The street was busy during the lunch rush, but he made his friend out of the bunch quickly thanks to his Watch Officer uniform. 

Jamie Madrox pulled off his cap and they embraced before he had a chance to think about how he had been recognized through his mask. He wasn't the only man in the order to favor the red-eyed look, though no others had as practical a purpose for it as he did. Jamie clasped their gloved hands in a punishing grip and shook him hard by the shoulder. 

“Scott Summers, you twit. I've never known you to be late in your life! What did they do to you up there?” He let go of him to make a circle with his fingers and knocked it back like a shot. “Too much Tyvian red for your blue veins? I've been up and down this street three times.  I was about to give up!” 

Madrox was a trouble-seeker and a romantic at heart. They had met and formed a friendship at the library, in between the crime and fantasy sections where they kept the best adventure stories. Jamie favored mysteries an absurd amount for someone with his heart on display, sewn on his sleeve. Jamie had gone into the Watch at the same time Scott had earned his Overseer uniform. They were officers in their factions by the time they were twenty, and no amount of resentment and bad blood between the Watch and the Abbey had ever gotten between them. Perhaps the younger generation was better at compartmentalizing, drawing a line between work and social life.

“You were expecting me?” Scott asked, surprised. He hadn't sent word ahead to his friends. Perhaps Nathaniel did. Which meant —

He clapped Jamie on the neck and braced him before he could rile him up any further. On the night he left Dunwall he handed Jamie a letter, a letter he was to get to Jean. He was supposed to do it — the night before — when they'd been together at sunset for the final time, but he had been a coward. He trusted Jamie to rectify his error.

“Jamie, tell me you gave her the letter.” He pleaded.

His friend hesitated, and all the blood drained from Scott’s face. He hadn't phrased it as a question because even the possibility Jamie might answer on the negative scared him. His knees nearly buckled. He clung to the lapels of Jamie’s high-collared jacket. 

“Jamie, tell me!”

“I did, I did!” Jamie said, pulling at his wrists before Scott could rip anything he would have to pay for. “I gave it to her, but you can't go see her alright? You can't go see her without me.” 

“Why can't I see her?” Scott asked tersely. He shook off his outburst like a dog out of a puddle. He prepared for the worst, straightening the line of his shoulders sharply. “What's happened?”

“Nothing!” Jamie laughed through his nerves. He rubbed the back of his neck with a sigh. “It's just been a long time, Summers. A real long time. She's in a different place now, over at the Civil Services District.”

“She left home.” His head sagged. “By herself?” 

“Look, this ain't a conversation we should be having on the street. I gotta tell her you're coming if you're coming—”

A commotion exploded at the end of the street, near the market stalls. Had someone fallen over? A thief, perhaps? Those gathered certainly seemed to be looking at something, or someone. Their formation barred it from Scott’s sight. Patrons and shopkeepers pulled back as a wisp of smoke rose from the ground, sparking in wild, electric blue.  _ Magic _ . 

Scott and Jamie reeled, each reaching for the swords at their waist but neither drawing. The nearest pedestrians took note of their stance and then the danger at hand. A woman covered her mouth with her hands, barely stifling a sound. The people shuffled and parted, just enough for Scott to make out a figure down on one knee, their hands bloodied and splayed out on the ground for balance.

Scott blinked.

The figure disappeared with a crack that burnt and bubbled their blood on the cobblestones. The witnesses scattered, locusts into the wind. And thus chaos reigned. They funneled into towards the square, screaming loud enough to wake the dead and near trampling each other into their own early graves.

“Stay here!” Jamie shouted. The street was quickly overrun. The Abbey square was a promise of protection, but they would only create more danger in their frenzy. A group thundered past the carriage, startling the horses. Scott dove for them, grabbing the reins before they could burst forth into a mother and her babe. Jamie hesitated, watching the carriage jerk, but Scott pushed him away. He could do this. Jamie cried out, frustrated by the choice to leave Scott behind, even if it was the right one. “Theresa and Gav are nearby! I will come back to see you tonight! I promise!”

Scott gave a brusque node as he wrestled the horses for control. Jamie turned, sword in hand, and shouted to scatter the frightened citizens. 

With the danger in his friend’s hands, Scott’s focus was on keeping the people safe. There were laborers and aristocrats alike in the sea of faces, all caught unaware and clinging to their possessions for dear life. 

“Stop!” He bellowed, echoed by the horses whinnying and clunking steel shoes. His timbre and the Overseer mask stopped them cold. He let go of the reins and put them in the driver’s outstretched hand, patting the man’s back hard, ordering him to keep them calm.  _ Take them away when you can.  _

“What is the meaning of this?” He asked in the same tone. He singled a man in a feathered hat with a finger. The others flanking him leaned away as if he were plague-ridden.“What has happened?” 

“I fear the problem is our own, Brother.” 

Nathaniel Essex and three other Overseers descended from the Square entrance with their masks under one arm and the leash for their wolfhounds on the other. He recognized his mentor by the scar on his forehead, slick black hair, and thick goatee. Time was not an enemy of the High Overseer, he looked exactly as he had when they’d last shared the city. The big brass buttons on Nathaniel’s rich purple overcoat were polished to a blinding shine. Scott could see himself in them as his guardian stepped close and touched his mask. 

“It's good to see you, child.” He said in a whisper, then louder for their gathered audience. “The man these good people saw is a heretic, a vile sorcerer capable of gruesome acts. We must alert the City Watch at once. They are in grave danger. Only the Overseers can stop him!” 

A loud murmur fell over the crowd. To Scott’s credit, he’d put a hitch in the mania before they could form a mob, but the High Overseer’s presence had rightly placated them most. He snapped his fingers and the officers behind him spread out. Essex grabbed Scott’s arm by the wrist and put the leash of his wolfhound in his hand. The brown beast rubbed himself over Essex’s leg, circling his boots anxiously. Essex draped his arm over Scott’s shoulders and led him away from prying eyes. 

“You will stop this man.” 

“Sir?” Scott rasped, sure he had misunderstood. “I have not trained in weeks. I’ve been missing doses of my powders. I was bedridden half the trip. I am in no condition to find this heretic—” 

“You will stop this man, Scott.” Essex said, tighter. He crouched to scratch the dog behind his ears. His beady, yellow eyes watched Scott, lips drawn back over his teeth in a smile. “Sabretooth has his scent. He will be faster if the two of you are alone. Find him, send Sabretooth back for me, wait for backup. Simple. You won’t have to do a thing.” 

Balling up his fists creased the fabric of his gloves. He tried a second time, with more urgency than sense. “Sir, I really think—” 

Sabretooth snarled and lurched back against his leash. The High Overseer pat him on the head, scratched him under the muzzle, as if rewarding him for a trick. He stood unhurriedly. He was taller than most men, and the heels of his boots added generous inches for the fun of it. He brushed him shoulder to shoulder, pausing to speak into his ear. 

“Do not _ think _ . I do this for your own sake. Your reputation needs this. More importantly,  _ I _ need to know you did not forget how to listen in Tyvia.” Essex smiled, soft laugh lines bent the razor khol lines winging his eyes. Scott chose to watch Sabretooth. He rolled the leash twice around his hand. A fleeting tremble passed over, quick as a heartbeat, and he was solid on his feet again. “Am I understood?”

“Yes, High Overseer.” He answered blankly.

“Good.” Essex produced calfskin parchment from his coat pocket and transferred into Scott’s. Amusement colored his voice. “Don’t look so put off, now. You’ll sour En Sabah Nur’s pure, honest face. This man was supposed to be your gift, child. Someone on whom to hone your skills.” 

He recognized the parchment as the one they used for briefings and reports. He would check it once Sabretooth picked up the trail, not under his mentor’s scrutiny. “My skills?”

“Of interrogation, of course.”  _ Of course,  _ thought Scott. “He’s quite durable. We melted down contraband and poured it into a mold for a new Heretic’s Brand. Only that one stuck. His body has regenerative properties, and no lone music box is enough to drown out his connection to The Witness. We had him at four when he pretended to be unconscious. You know how soft-hearted our young Brothers can be. It was a good trick.” 

Scott stroked the Scriptures. The High Overseer was lenient on the use of  _ some  _ magic to fight magic, though it was called  _ alchemy  _ in the hands of Every Man. It wasn’t strictly prohibited under that name. Scott had no illusions about what it really was. He chewed through a possible protest. The Heretic’s Brand ensured prisoners sentenced to life would not be free even upon escape. To mark a man who would not scar... “Regeneration is dark magic.” He wasn’t sure how much lighter manipulating cursed objects was on that scale. He muttered. “He got his guards to turn off his music boxes and then what?” 

Essex grinned. “He killed every single one of them.”

Scott shuddered to think of any man who could cut his way out of security as severe as the High Overseer described. The true power of sorcery was beyond the Abbey’s understanding, though they loathed to admit it. Every witch they encountered had their own unpredictable moniker. They evolved to survive. The Witness’ hand poisoned their souls through the Void. Scott was determined to stop this accessory to his will. He made his determination clear to the High Overseer with an incline of his head. He tugged Sabretooth along.

“To Every Man his choice,” Essex bid him in place of goodbye.

“To Every Man his fate.” He finished in his stead.


	2. it goes without saying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott and Sabretooth venture into Providence Boulevard looking for the apostate known as Logan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I upped the rating because there are references to child death (briefly) at the beginning of this chapter and some graphic violence at the end. It gets a little gore-y, but just enough I felt I should mention it.  
> Thank you so much for 100+ hits on last chapter! And your comments! They fueled this one and made me excited to post it so soon.

**2**

**PROVIDENCE BOULEVARD, DUNWALL**

**_5th day, Month of High Cold, 1851_ **

“Even his name is deceitful. He does not merely watch. His words are poison. He plays with the lives of men like a sadistic child, sending them down a road where the toll is death and suffering. Fools embark down this path, chasing momentary pleasures.”

— THE WITNESS: RESISTING TEMPTATION

From the desk of late High Overseer Andre Thorton.

* * *

 

Wolfhound pups went to Whitecliff alongside the chosen children during the Trials of Aptitude. They were members of the Order, without question. They underwent the same rites and shared their special senses, though they could sniff out the corruption of the Void at a greater distance than their human partners. To own a wolfhound was the pride of any Overseer. Scott lost his first inside the temple walls, before either of them had a real chance. There was a hiccup during the ceremony, and mistakes were The Witness’ wiles at work. Some dogs had to be put to sleep, same as the children.

Sabretooth was Nathaniel Essex’s favorite dog. The High Overseer loved all manner of beasts, the toothier the better. Sabretooth was a _beast_ among beasts. The wide curve of his back came up past Scott’s waist, his yellow-brown fur growing in layers to keep dry in Dunwall’s damp. He had a habit of _pushing,_  going out of his way to bump the back of Scott’s knees when he was in a mood. When he wasn’t pushing, he was dragging, taking advantage of his thicker-than-average legs and the sharp claws at their ends to scare people out of their way.

Scott matched his pace out of necessity, he could not disagree with the dog’s haste. He’d first led him to the blackened strip left behind by the sorcerer. The foulness of the Void reached him, sweet-smelling like a corpse in early stages of decay. The rabble had scared because he’d disappeared in front of their very eyes. Gone between blinks. Transversal magic. _Cowardice._

It boded well for them. Transversal magic was exhausting, even if it did give the man a head start. With any luck they would find him passed out in a dumpster with no spirit left to fight back. Sabretooth paced impatiently, he spun to bite his leash and tugged until Scott complied with his wishes. The hound would find this man, but it was Scott’s job to plan ahead. Men behaved unpredictably if cornered like animals, and a sorcerer was doubly dangerous.

News had already spread across the Distillery District through the loudspeakers. Citizens were advised to alert an Overseer if they came in contact with any suspicious activity. A description of the man as he had last been seen followed. Scott remembered the report in his pocket, retrieved it and examined it, trusting Sabretooth to guide him while distracted.

The sorcerer’s name was Logan, no surname available, fugitive of the Empire, alias The Wolverine due to his savage nature. He escaped from Coldridge Prison some four years ago, skirting the death penalty for the murder of Baron Strucker. It wasn't his first offense. Bar fights littered his record, most ending in bloodshed. Three different street gangs were listed as known affiliates. Those were the _active_ gangs. His aggression was apparent, theft and kidnapping thrown in as footnotes by comparison. There was a crude picture of him drawn with unusually shaped hair. It put the accuracy of the sketch into question.

They advanced towards the heart of Providence Boulevard. Sabretooth grew increasingly frustrated. He stopped near an alleyway, head snapping back and forth, before snorting angrily and following the original trail. It was to be expected. Heretics were familiar with Overseer methods. If Mr. Logan had the means to escape Coldridge Prison then he was smart enough to try and disorient a wolfhound.

“Don't let it get to you." He said patiently, scanning the alley just to be sure. “It's all smoke and m—”

He wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been for the trains. Almost every street in Dunwall had rail lines, embedded in cobblestone or far above the rooftops. The late Royal Inventor had made the railways crisscrossing the city very quiet for the ten tons of angry metal that went over them every hour. But Providence Boulevard had eight rail lines, for eight different trains, it could get loud in short bursts. It was a cosmological sign, a product of the stars in perfect alignment, because as two trains screeched past Scott, one to his left and one to his right, in the space between carts he saw Logan and his weirdly shaped hair limping away.

Sabretooth— _En Sabah Nur curse his name_ — saw him too. He howled louder than the train whistle, altering their target. The muscles of Logan’s bare back went taut. He hunched over, twisted his head enough for Scott to catch the brown of his eyes, and shot up the remaining steps.

“Logan! Stop in the name of the Abbey!” He shouted, voice drowned by the train and Sabretooth’s growls. He kneeled to free the leash from the dog’s collar, shaking him by the band of leather to get his attention. “Get your master. Now!”

Sabretooth zigzagged away from the scene. Scott kept his eyes on the staircase and adjacent bridge. He had been right to assume him blink fatigued, Logan ran but did not transverse. He could play it safe, wait for the train to pass before he gave chase, but—

Intermittently among the carts were cargo planks, with boxes too big to hold elsewhere nailed and strapped down. Scott let one go by, too hesitant to make the leap. _Do it_ , he grit his teeth. _Now or never_. He closed his eyes and counted the bumps of wheels over track. He exhaled like a punch, rolled over the next plank and hit the ground running with barely a breath in his chest. He scuffed his shoes tripping on the stairs, stumbled and righted himself. The roll would not have winded him if it weren’t for the concussion. He was convinced it was not so mild as diagnosed. He would be of no use if he could not place his target. He was an expert in close combat techniques, he had his sword, and a pistol he could fire accurately, though it saw little use.

He was hot on Logan’s heels as he reached the end of the steps. If he drew his sword he could strike him. Logan took the sharp turn onto the bridge. Closer now, Scott could tell he was a foot shorter and twice as wide. He was fast, but Scott had the advantage. He climbed the wrought iron railing on the stairs and lunged forth, over the edge of the bridge and straight into Logan’s body as he lumbered in his trajectory. It was like hitting a brick wall. Logan recoiled, then hammered back, shoving his shoulder hard into Scott’s sternum. The balustrade smashed into his spine.

“Stop there!” He yelled, finally freeing his sword.

Logan slid back smoothly and unnaturally, raising dust and granite around his heels. He had no shoes or a shirt. There were only the shredded remains of his pants. His whole body was covered in coarse black hair. He held one hand forward,—his _Void-touched_ hand, bearing the Mark of The Witness— the other cradled a wound in his hip, bleeding profusely into his pocket.  

Logan looked back beyond the bridge. It was low, fit for traveling over the canal, but a fall would sting. He visibly reconsidered. The heretic relaxed his stance. “Sure.”

Confusion weighed Scott’s brow. He mimicked the man’s body language. “Truly?”

A smile flickered beneath his unkempt beard. “Nah.”

His Marked hand splintered and let in the air of the Void. Scott flinched. It was more embarrassing than falling for the ruse. Fear in the face of the Void would be a downfall. He quickly folded one sleeve over his elbow. His arm-guard glinted under the erratic light of Logan’s Mark. He held it like a shield, spinning his sword around.

“I promise you, should you fall by my sword you will be read the rites and your spirit will be freed.” He said, not because he expected to kill him, but because he might. Logan’s regenerative powers were linked to his magic, and his magic was momentarily at its end. Apostates fought madly, their lives already forfeit. Accidents happened.

“Are you threatening me, boy?” Logan’s smile widened.

Scott’s lip twitched downward unpleasantly. A man Logan’s size should not be calling anyone _boy_. It was an immature response, he would not broadcast it. He refused to be irked into a rapport.

“Have it your way, Overseer.”

He flicked his other hand forward. Scott failed to grasp its purpose. Bloodied fingers unfurled around the neck of a tiny flask, full to the stopper with shiny, blue-grey liquid. Scott’s mind staggered as he recognized the contents of the phial. Time trickled in slowly, one grain of sand through the hourglass. It was a sound soul and a sound mind in a bottle. _Restorative elixir_.

“No!”

He would not reach the elixir in time, and even the desperate grab for his gun was fruitless. Logan’s thumb nail dug out the stopper, he emptied the bottle into his throat. He tossed it aside, it hit the ground and did not shatter. Scott watched it roll and stop against the tip of his boot. They looked at each other across the bridge in an instant that lasted a hundred years in the Void, where time flowed differently.

But the fight was not yet lost.

He crunched the flask underfoot and swung his sword forward with a guttural cry. His blade carved through thin air. Scott turned quickly, dragging glass over granite. With an elixir that size Logan would not be fully refreshed, but it would be enough for him to escape or attack. His pistol would do more harm, but with his transversal abilities returned to him Logan would be harder to pin.

He closed his eyes and listened. The Void was always whispering, always there, scratching against the walls of his psyche. Ever-growing, all-consuming. All Overseers could sense the Void in various ways, but it was few that could hear it. Not without losing their minds. That had been Scott’s mark, the reason he'd been recognized as a child.

The Void devoured everything in its path. It was erratic and unbearably _loud_. Loud like the padding of Logan’s feet beside him. His sword went under his arm, with the intent to outpace the heretic even if the blow did not land. It struck against something that shrieked like steel. Logan couldn’t have procured a weapon that quickly, not in this place. He jumped back and opened his eyes.

Three-pronged obsidian crystals grew out from behind his knuckles. Smoke of the Void circled his hand and burnt through the fabric of reality, warping the air around it. Logan clenched his fists, flexing out the kinks in his fingers, likely because he hadn't used the claws since capture. They had to be costing him.

“Void sensitive, huh?” Logan asked, tongue-in-cheek. “That’s one step off being Marked, you know.”

“Overseers are marked, yes, but not by your god.” Scott spat.

“I’d love to stay and chat politics, but I got places to be.” He shrugged. “Can’t afford to fight fair, either, sorry about that.”

Scott bit his tongue trying to parry the next slash of Logan’s black glass claws. Upon closer inspection, after he ducked out of their way, he noticed the claws formed from beneath the skin. Metamorphic magic, like the White Queen’s crystals, not deadly but—painful. _Mercy, how they must be painful._

“Your magic must be tiring you.” He ventured.

“That stick up your ass must be chafing.” Logan countered.

Logan was impatient with their short dance. His claws were dangerously sharp, but they did not grow any longer than they looked. The best strategy was to keep his sword’s length between them, stop him from getting too close. He kept it low, at level with his gut. He didn’t know how powerful Logan’s regenerative abilities were, but anyone would have problem fighting with their insides spilled. The heretic was short on spirits and up against an armored opponent. He was being overly stingy with the use of his magic, perhaps out of necessity, but he would not let himself believe Logan had used up all his strength.

Scott felt it when he transversed through him, like being doused with a bucket of cold water, and for a blood-curdling moment, he feared _possession_ was among Logan’s tricks. Materializing again gave Scott a moment to think _oh, he’s merely behind me_ before Logan wrapped his arms around his throat in a chokehold.

“Lift your sharp little stick and I promise I’ll snap your neck before you can get it through my face.”

Scott lifted the _sharp little stick_ with every intention of driving it through Logan’s eye. Pain shot through his fingers and sank abuzz into his bones like a burn from leaning on a hot stove. His sword was gone, it lay beside his gun, kicked to one end of the bridge while Logan backed them into the other. _Time manipulation._ Scott felt so very _stupid_. There was no way Logan could manage to bend time fueled by one measly bottle of elixir. His magic hadn’t bottomed out, he had been smart and saved it after the first couple of blinks.

The distance should have told him that. He was a powerful sorcerer. Logan would have covered more ground if he’d run himself dry. _Idiot. Idiot. Idiot._

“I—I am not _afraid_ to die.” Scott sputtered, struggling to stand upright. Logan was heavier than two anvils in a stack. His lighter figure would not get him to budge. His thick, strong arms choked him tighter.

“You _don’t_ let the guy choking you know you can still talk, boy.” He sighed. “I will knock you out, make it quick. Leave you for your pals to find. How does that sound?”

He was going to die, thrown over a bridge by a heretic who made a word as simple as _boy_ sound like a grave insult. His weapons were beyond reach, his nails trimmed too finely to do any damage to Logan’s forearms. The air had stopped reaching his lungs, crushed painfully in his throat. He was going to die.

In a blind moment of pure instinct, Scott stopped trying to struggle upwards, bent his knees and smashed his elbow into Logan’s groin.

Logan yowled. He smashed Scott’s head into the stone railing, but freed his windpipe. He kicked Scott between the shoulderblades, making his head bounce again. His chin scraped on the rock, his mask had cracked from the force of the blow. Logan grabbed the cloth cover at the back of his head and, though Scott clung to his wrist, he wrestled off the remains of En Sabah Nur’s face. He held Scott by the small hairs at the back of his neck, like pinching the hide of a wolfhound, and forced him down on the ground before he could regain his senses.

“You fucking—” His foot pushed at his hip and turned him belly up. He watched him call upon the obsidian. Skin opened like a wound between his knuckles. The claws grew bone white before they hardened black. They reached halfway to their tips and stopped, shook and fractured. Something stopped Logan from plunging even the half-formed claws into his chest. Had his magic finally failed him?

The sun was in Scott’s eyes. It blurred his vision, but he was sure Logan was watching his face with his jaw slack.

“You.” He repeated, this time with something like _recognition._ He laughed breathlessly, incredulous. Logan cocked his head cat-like, giving him an appraising glance over. “The silvergraphs slim you.”

Stars whirled in Scott’s vision. Even muddled by the blows on his recently concussed head he gathered that was a strange thing to say. What silvergraphs? Where had Logan seen a picture of him? In the Abbey?

Why would that stop him from slashing him open from throat to navel like he had every chance to?

He would ask these questions out loud, _demand_ the answers if need be. He had not forgotten Logan could have taken advantage of his foolishness and killed him more than once. He had killed his guards without mercy. It made no sense he should hesitate to cut down the last obstacle to freedom. He tasted sour humiliation. If Logan spared him because he saw a _boy_ he would _jump_ into the canal. There had to be an explanation to be found in his smug smile. It was a standoff; if it could be called that while Scott lay on the ground between Logan’s legs. He scrambled onto his elbows and rose no further after Logan’s warning growl.

They lingered in that stand-still for longer than either of them could justify. It was clear they weren’t feeling each other out with the intent to attack. Curiosity sparked like the light from Logan’s hand.

Blood splattered out of Logan’s parted lips. It shocked Scott as much as it did him. They both looked down to the tapered point of the harpoon piercing the apostate’s stomach from end to end. Logan’s eyes widened and slitted like the waning moon. He dropped over Scott one knee at a time, dripping onto his pristine grey coat.

“Witness’ balls—” He coughed up. His fingers were too red and slick to get a grip on the harpoon head. He looked as he had when he thought himself alone, shuffling up the stairs. Exhausted. In pain. “Again with the _fucking_ harpoons.”

He finished the thought before the second harpoon spiked through his neck. Something whistled—the baitcasting reel—and Logan snapped back like a hagfish on the end of a hook. Scott sat up after him, tugged by an invisible line, and could not help the sound he made at the sight. Logan’s deadweight dragged against the granite. His flesh scraped and bled, leaving angry red trails in its wake.

“What do you think you are doing?!”

Two of his Brothers stood at the top of the stairs, harpoon guns at the ready. They seemed bewildered at Scott for raising his voice. The single stripe on their sleeves would not let them treat an Overseer of his rank with anything but respect. Scott could have stalked over and shaken then hard by the shoulders if that hadn’t meant stepping over Logan’s limp body.

“It’s alright, sir. We were sure the harpoons wouldn’t hurt you none.” They reasoned. The one on the left pulled hard at the line. It made a sickening sound, but the harpoon did not budge. “Heals almost immediately, he does. No way it’d go through. ”

Scott felt the same bone-tiredness apparent in Logan before the second harpoon finished him off. He braced himself on the railing. The grooves in the porous rock pooled his blood.

“High Overseer Essex asked for this man _back._ ” He yelled. “ _Alive!_ ”

“He is alive, sir!” The Brother on the right rushed. “High Overseer said so himself, he can’t be killed. Put a whole round in his head and he just spat ‘em back up like it was nothing. See? He’s already stopped bleeding.”

Logan had. A half-lidded look revealed only the whites of his eyes, but skin had begun to grow clean and hairless around the harpoons. The vein following the column of his throat pumped, clinging to life. He wasn’t visibly breathing, but that was to be expected. The second harpoon had exited through his trachea. Nevertheless, there were signs of life. The Void, still present. He could sense it, clinging to Logan’s body. It was impossible for anyone to survive those injuries, and yet he knew it to be true. Essex would be pleased.

Scott leaned over the bridge and threw up into the canal.

There was a handkerchief inside his jacket pocket, behind the report with Logan’s face. The sketch wasn’t accurate after all. The bridge of his nose was wider than that. Scott pinched the space between his eyebrows and waved off help from his Brothers. Home was a long way back and carrying Logan would make it longer. He was informed there was a cart waiting for them in the boulevard. Scott stopped listening.

Logan had broken his nose and it had ruined Scott’s handkerchief. _Curious_. The pain hadn’t yet registered. The blood reminded him absurdly of Jean, not her red hair, but her unwashed hands after she gave him stitches once. She had a steady hand, but not enough practice.

Scott covered his face. His hands trembled. Jean was strong enough to face this world where men were harpooned twice over and tossed in the back of a cart like so much whale meat. In the face of madness, she would not change.

He felt himself changing every day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos, bookmarks, and comments are very lovely and deeply encouraging for me. Talk to me over on [Tumblr](https://cykelops.tumblr.com/) should you have any questions!


	3. labor preserves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They reached the Abbey with little fanfare. The streets were clear. Not a soul had stuck around after the loudspeakers rang warning. Magic was more common in Dunwall than in any city in the Isles, but it was still cause for prudence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some warnings about the darker themes of this fic!  
> \- Sexual assault is implied as a possibility but it's not explicit and I promise you it'll never happen in this fic. It's a conversation about preventing it.  
> \- The Abbey of Everyman kidnaps children at a young age, child abuse is common. Scott alludes to what happened to him and others as children.

**3**

**EN SABAH NUR SQUARE, DUNWALL**

**_5th day, Month of High Cold, 1851_ **

“Within the borders of Dunwall sits a little country known as the Averyman, and in this quaint little land they do not keep dog breeds as we understand them, but two-legged, rosy-cheeked creatures that track on command and have rarely a thought in their heads that isn’t dictated by the sound of a horn.”

— DUNWALL IN STRIDE

Excerpt from an unpopular satire book banned at the turn of the century and faded into obscurity.

* * *

 

He pulled rank and sat on one of the two seats at the head of the cart while banishing one of the Brothers to ride beside Logan, Sabretooth napping calmly between their legs. He had nervous hands with trigger happy fingers. Scott did not much trust him to keep watch. In the end, it left him twisted on his seat, his own pistol pointed to the sorcerer’s temple. Scott sank like a fly in molasses into a daze that gripped him and would not relent.

Logan was chained down at the wrists, ankles, and neck. The second harpoon had been removed, the first still embedded in his gut. A note from Essex explained one lethal injury should be maintained during transport, to ensure the heretic would sleep. Scott made the choice of which to let heal. He slid the projectile himself, out the front of his neck, not from behind with his foot pressed on Logan’s shoulder for balance as he'd just barely stopped his men from doing. It hadn't crossed their mind pulling the harpoon the way it came might very well tear the man’s head off.

It was his duty to watch Logan’s face for any signs of consciousness, shoot him if necessary. On occasion, the cart bumped on the uneven road and jolted his hand. The barrel of the gun caught on Logan’s knife-edge cheek over a smattering of light freckles. Scott nearly mumbled an apology to the sleeping man. He stopped himself before he could do real damage to his reputation. A simple misstep. His mind urged him to escape and Logan’s looks were unfamiliar land, distant enough to settle on.

The Heretic’s Brand burned on the center of his chest. Hot and red like muscle tissue or the embers that had licked the branding iron. It looked to Scott like an open wound that did not heal nor blacken as other brands did. The brand had once been reserved for the use of crimes against the Abbey by a _member_ of the Abbey. It had the authority to make even a High Overseer undesirable. Nathaniel Essex had abolished the practice— or rather, redirected its efforts.

Scott’s light brown hair hung in strands over his forehead, tousled out of place. Jamie liked to joke he didn't so much comb it as nail it down. It made the frolicsome sun in his eyes bearable. His nose trickled insistently over his fat lip. He held his handkerchief close to keep more stains off his jacket, but he would continue bleeding unless he laid down. His nose was tender, likely bruised and definitely broken. Together with the heretic, he painted a bloody picture.

Bloodshed was a staple of daily life in Dunwall. If it wasn't the plague, it was gang violence, it was self-harm. It put bodies on the street, in ditches and alleyways where unfortunate children escaped their bullies. He was young and yet he'd seen every manner of horrors. Sacrifices, cannibalism, death in the frozen wastes. Gore should not make him uneasy. By all means, he should be desensitized to it. It was easy for soft men to lose their minds in his line of work. The Warfare Overseers could not afford those losses. Their minds must be as tough as their weapons.

They reached the Abbey with little fanfare. The streets were clear. Not a soul had stuck around after the loudspeakers rang warning. Magic was more common in Dunwall than in any city in the Isles, but it was still cause for prudence. They would announce the heretic’s recapture soon enough, and all would praise the Abbey’s quick work. High Overseer Essex would find a way to spin the conversation away from how they had lost him in the first place.

The cart steered away from the entrance to En Sabah Nur square. Sabretooth raised his muzzle and scented their proximity to home. He jumped from the cart before any of them, heading to the main entrance where he was far more likely to find his owner. Even with people safely indoors, it wouldn't do to parade the heretic through the main street. They breached a discreet vehicle entrance, where they were greeted by several Brothers, all armed, many with music boxes strapped to their chests.

Scott returned the pistol to his gunbelt and nearly plummeted as he disembarked. A young man, too young to be involved in this operation, draped Scott’s arm over his shoulder and compensated for his lost balance.

“I best take you to the infirmary, sir.” His Brother on the reins cautioned. He touched down beside him. “Carter and the boys can take it from here.”

Carter? Referring to the other harpoon wielder, of course. Scott shook his head.

“Thank you, Brother, but that will not be necessary.” He said ungratefully. He gripped the boy’s shoulder and hoisted himself to his full height. “If you must escort someone, please see Mr. Alleyne back to the barracks. He does not have the clearance or the experience to deal with this threat.”

David tensed. His brown eyes watched Scott carefully through a veil of his lashes as to hide the betrayal he'd sparked in them. He would take this removal as a sign of distrust, maybe even jealousy if he considered Scott a lesser man. He had been branded Essex’s _second_ favorite before Scott had left Dunwall. 

“Brother,” The boy, David Alleyne, protested. He was too polite to raise his voice. “I was assigned to this case by the High Overseer himself.”

“I am sure His Excellency meant well in granting you this opportunity to observe, David, but I've assessed the threat and determined this subject is only suitable to be studied by Vice Overseers or above.” He reasoned.

The Overseers standing guard around them exchanged worried looks. Brothers of the Abbey often behaved as though their superiors could not see them. They weren't completely wrong, but Abbey politics demanded they be aware of their Brothers as keenly as their targets lest those closest to them stray from the light of the Cosmos. Scott saw them, not in the name of the stars but his own safety, he sensed the air getting stiffer.

Everyone knew David was a favored prodigy of Essex’s and he likely intended for him to do more than observe. That despite Scott’s rank, being stationed in Tyvia had rendered his authority devoid of importance. No one dared mention Scott was not a Vice Overseer, regardless of how often he behaved like one. It wasn't because Scott was good at putting himself in charge or making airs. His Brothers were not guilty of trusting him, they did not believe his word was indubitable or his charisma _overwhelming_ to even the most hardened soldiers. No. Nothing so romantic as that. The world was simply returning to its anterior state.

His Brothers feared if they upset him, he would run and tell daddy.

Historically, Scott had never gone to Essex to resolve altercations between him and his peers. He had been abused at the hands of people his age before he came to the Abbey, he had learned… conflict resolution skills. Sometimes that meant an exchange of words, or a spar, or _ignoring_ the problem. That was all Scott. However, his failed tormentors all met curious fates. Reassignments, mostly, but there were rumors. There were always rumors.

In that scenario, not only was Scott a snitch, he was also a backstabber. Making peace publicly while whispering lies to the High Overseer.

“Very well, Brother.” David ceded. He placed his hand over Scott’s heart and affirmed he was capable of standing by his own efforts before leaving him to them. “I will report the subject’s arrival to the High Overseer and inform him of your evaluation of the threat.”

“Thank you.” Scott said and meant it. In very few words David had allayed the Brothers. The younger man was trusted despite the patronage Essex offered him. He had been established as his prodigy, but not his son. Little differences had sizeable impact in climates as insular as the Abbey.

He returned David’s bow and watched him leave the room. There were more stripes on his sleeves than Scott remembered there being two years ago. He’d been promoted, if the leverage he had over their Brothers wasn’t proof enough of his rank. Scott would have to speak to him later. David had always been kind to him.

Scott let out a soft breath between his parted lips. _Back in business._

The Brothers had the foresight to bring more than weapons and music boxes to deal with the heretic. There was a stretcher among their equipment and he enlisted their help in getting Logan off the cart and onto the stretcher. Scott held the harpoon in place while two Brothers dragged his limp weight across. He was heavy, even for a man his build. The Brothers struggled to keep the stretcher from tipping. It wasn’t completely unnatural. Logan slept like the dead, quite literally, it explained the difficulty. Scott allowed them the benefit of the doubt all the way to the door before he interrupted their trek.

“Alright. Two men won’t do it.” He gestured to the driver and Overseer Carter, the only man who’s name he knew of the bunch. “Hold the stretcher on the right and you on the left. It’ll be much faster this way.”

Four men carrying the stretcher, two flanking them with music boxes, and Scott in the middle, dragging his feet. They travelled the longer way to the holding cells to avoid taking any stairs from the vehicle entrance. They skirted past the foyer where Overseers met with congregants, as there were sure to be many gathered craving comfort, and stuck to the wider halls leading to the back yard.

The office of the High Overseer in Dunwall, lovingly nicknamed _the Abbey_ as all permanent hubs of Overseer activity were, was a beautiful structure. It was built of thick blocks of Gristol granite polished to a perfect, smooth shine. The drapery and carpeting were the same opulent shade of brilliant violet, threaded in lustrous gold. It met all the needs of its Overseers. High-rise, labyrinthine, and secure as the royal palace itself, it was rigged to go under instant lockdown should the alarms ever sound.

Logan’s blood had dried, it was Scott leaving dirty streaks on the immaculate floors, marring a place otherwise in perfect order.

The foyer was the area most accessible to those outside the Abbey and the back yard was everything but. It contained the barracks, the High Artificer’s workshop, the kennels, holding cells, and various warehouses, completely off-limits to outsiders unless explicitly permitted by the High Overseer. Exceptions were made for next of kin if an Overseer placed the request, but most had left their families so young they had no memory of or any desire to see them.

Scott knew to get Logan as far as the prisoners’ block, but not which cell he'd been authorized to occupy. The Abbey’s holding cells were still a work in progress, only recently built within a repurposed warehouse to keep heretics in the process of being interrogated, or Marked awaiting an execution Coldridge Prison could not safely provide.

Overseer Murdock stood at the iron doors to the warehouse, waiting patiently for their arrival. His assistants grabbed the handle on each door and pulled them back like peeling paint. A dull green glow haloed Murdock’s hair and bounced off the insides of his red shades. An eagle head folding cane stretched across the ground towards them. He was the warden when there were prisoners to be had. It was a volunteer position, but Murdock dissuaded any other candidates from throwing their hat in their ring. He had a passion for justice, outspoken about treating prisoners—even heretics—with civility. Six keys hung from the thin silver chains of his chatelaine, one for each cell in the block.

Scott stopped their entourage with a raised hand.  “Which cell is he cleared for?”

“The same he escaped from.” said Murdock. He shrugged, as if he had no say on the matter. “High Overseer’s orders. It is the only one with enough room for his… devices, I suppose.”

Perplexed, Scott came nearer so they might speak with some semblance of privacy. Murdock’s cane bumped into his shoe. He followed the sound of his voice. “Surely the smell of death has yet to be cleared? It's only been a few hours.”

“No death here. Merely two unconscious guards.” He shook his head and flicked his hand towards the kennels. “No. The men he killed were further up the yard.”

“May they be merged with the Cosmos.” Scott said absently. He pressed. “I had been led to believe his guards were slaughtered during his escape. Tell me, what really happened here?”

A flicker of hesitation crossed Murdock’s face. Scott caught it by chance, like a fly between his fingers. Murdock knew something he wasn't sharing. He had asked him instinctually, with very little to go on, but he was sure now. Overseer Murdock could not see, but he always made an effort to reflect your eyes on his red lenses. He was approachable, charismatic, and open. He spoke from his lips to his hands. The anxious fiddling and shrugging lacked his take-charge attitude, the reason he'd been given control of the cells in the first place. Something was up. Scott gripped his arm firmly around the elbow.  

“Matthew, please. You can trust me." He said in earnest.

The odds were against him. Matthew and he had been friends, yes, but he hadn't kept in touch, just like with everyone else. He wasn't sure how much substance remained in their relationship. Maybe not enough to be worth confiding in.

Matthew sighed, he shouldered Scott into a corner and unhooked a key from his chatelaine. He held his arm straight until one of his officers relieved the burden from his fingers.

“Room at the end of the hall. Quickly, before their arms cramp.”

The stretcher and music boxes huddled past down the block. Matthew stopped Scott from following by pressing firmly into the center of his chest. Scott wasn't sure if he'd been pushed into the nook for privacy or simply to get him out of the way. The former, it looked like. He hunched over Murdock and gave him his ear. Matthew spoke swiftly and evenly.

“There are a few things I know for sure. The Brothers High Overseer assigned here for the first few nights of Logan’s stay were unusually violent. I usually pick my own men, but this was a special request. Things took a turn for the worse, and I was forced to dismiss the Brothers provided and bring in my own.” It wasn't strange for avid followers of the scriptures to seek to punish evil with their own hands, but Murdock knew that, he would not have called the treatment unusual unless it was out of the ordinary. “I admit I picked compassionate men, good men— but good men rarely make good guards. My hand was forced to overcompensate. Two days ago Essex turned over a girl, barely sixteen and quite guilty of her crimes. I feared for her—”

Matthew’s voice lowered, his cane moved in a sharp arc towards the patrol walking by. They were suddenly very aware of their setting, coming a few inches apart for appearance's sake.

“I am secure in the knowledge our Brothers would never commit crimes of the flesh, but I've seen them go through great lengths in the name of… justice.”

Scott pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed his fingers over his temples to assuage the already building migraine. The spectre behind Matthew’s carefully chosen words was haunting.

“You did the right thing.” He mumbled, too shaken to linger on it. “Your hand-picked men turned off the heretic’s music boxes?”

“He complained of the pain often. It looked agonizing. The girl is one of the Shared, she has no magic herself, or they would have caved with her too.” Matthew folded his hands over the head of his cane. “They're young. They would never have done it if I'd been here to instruct them. They would have asked first.”

Scott frowned. “Where were you?”

“In the foyer, solving another dispute between merchants. Sermons proved unsuccessful and they required my gift.” Matthew said casually, as if the ability to detect a silver tongue was as commonplace as snapping one’s fingers. “The girl who could easily be kept at Coldridge, the guard change, the nonsense problem I was called away for-- All very _convenient.”_

“Surely, you don't think--”

“I’m aware it is all circumstantial evidence. You need not warn me away from such thoughts. I already know to keep them to myself.” He soured. “I only share this with you because I fear this was all intended to unfold moments before your arrival.”

Scott’s lips pinched tightly. “The High Overseer praised him as a gift to me.”

“You were not the only one to hear it. Your name was tossed around so often and so vividly in the last month I hardly feel your physical presence as a novelty."

“So it was some kind of test? By someone who doubts my skills?” Scott asked hurriedly.

A short, wet scream like the sound of Old Dunwall liquor hitting the bottom of a tankard echoed down the hall. Scott and Matthew turned and grimaced in unison. Their Brothers had removed the harpoon.

Matthew tucked two of his fingers into Scott’s belt and pulled fondly on the velvet-soft leather. It reminded them both of the first year Matthew came to the Abbey—being raised with the Oracular Sisters until the stars spoke of his true place—and he spent a month learning the layout of the place with Scott attached at his hip. Scott was sure he could get around by himself after the first _week,_ but Matthew enjoyed his company too much to admit it. Jean had spoiled him, he could not turn down that sort of flattery.

“I don't mean to fill your head with intrigue when it's been clearly banged up enough for a day. All these politics and you not even unpacked in your rooms.” Matthew’s nose came inches from his cheek, though it didn't need to. That reminded him of that first year too, when they did a great deal of things they didn't need to. “You smell of blood. You're in no condition to look for answers. It's nearing night and you're exhausted.”

He was right. The day’s efforts had worn him down to the soles of his shoes. He would have resisted calling the retreat if it wasn't for Matthew’s familiar touch at his waist, touch he was dearly lacking. He hadn't been prepared for any form of kindness. Scott bent his head and took his advice to heart, his wearied bones left little choice. Pangs and aches had begun sticking to his ribs like little electrical shocks.

“I will go.” Scott bid himself. He clasped Matthew’s shoulders. “Thank you for telling me. I don't think I would have made the connection on my own.”

Matthew released him, almost reluctantly, creasing his overcoat with the drag on his belt. He tilted his head mournfully towards Logan’s cell and then nudged Scott away.

He set out as the first drops of rain fell from the darkened skies. They streaked the dirt and blood on his face in thin, icy trails. Shards of sunset peeked between the clouds like crystals on a kaleidoscope, yellow and orange sinking into the sea, indigo rising with the moon. The last of the sun’s warmth blew hot over his white collar and he was forced to pry it loose and pocket it to relieve the pressure on his throat. He would wash his uniform by hand, though there were seven other uniforms just like it in the trunk he had brought from Tyvia and younger Overseers willing to perform odd jobs for their superiors. He would do it on his own.

He was stopped at the back door by a young man with hair like faded sunlight. The rubbery smack of his white physician’s gloves rattled him more than the use of his name.

“Overseer Summers?” He said patiently. “I'm to bring you to the infirmary to fix the problem of your nose.”

“My nose? What's wrong with my nose?” Scott touched it and immediately regretted it, hissing in pain.

“Precisely that. High Overseer Essex must have spotted you on the way in. He was very furious. You know how he feels about bruised faces.” He tutted. “Anything but the face.”

Scott squinted at his cheerful medic. The dryness in his eyes was quickly becoming unbearable as the whale-oil lamps lit automatically across the yard as the clock touched upon the hour.

“I'm sorry, who are you?”

“Joshua Foley, at your service.” Scott shook the offered hand after a beat of silence. “I see you're a little worse for wear. Fatigue, or something more serious?”

“Migraines.” He admitted, already used to this song and dance with physicians. “I haven't my powders with me and my eyeglasses are missing.”

Overseer Foley nodded. “I am familiar with your medical history. I believe we've what we need to help with that migraine. High Overseer said you arrived without your glasses, so I sent for a new pair. Courtesy of the High Artificer.”

He wondered if Murdock would forgive him if Foley became his favorite person for the day. He was offering him his medicine and his shades. He was a man after his own heart. The High Overseer had most likely gone through his things to determine he had lost his eyeglasses, but so long as it got him new ones, Scott could forgive him for prying.

“Please. Thank you.” He said, for lack of anything better. “I'm sorry. I'm not myself.”

“Don't think anything of it. No one needs a doctor because they're doing well.” Foley pointed out the way to his office with a wide sweep of his arm. “Shall we?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was meant to be longer (again) but I cut it short because I wasn't feeling good about dragging poor, weary Scott through another scene... By the way, if you think there was a past Scott/Matthew fling implied, you are 100% correct.  
> Kudos, bookmarks, and comments fill my heart with love and motivation! Thank you to everyone who's taken the time to leave any or all of the above.


	4. the boy is father to the man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott is called to the High Overseer's room to pick up his assignment and a cup of tea. It doesn't go well, like most things in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went over word count limit per chapter again without noticing, so Jean is not in this one either. God. Please imagine this chapter is called "The Search for Jean" because that's exactly what he's doing.

**4**

**EN SABAH NUR SQUARE, DUNWALL**

**_6th day, Month of High Cold, 1851_ **

“I met a boy here, just like you feared I would. He's nothing to worry about—he's taken with a girl himself and I believe his affection for her to outmatch what he feels for me— but when I am with him I understand your frustration and amusement with my own naivety and enthusiasm. Elektra, I know you'll find it difficult to believe me, but he is worse than I am.”

— TO ELEKTRA E. NATCHIOS

From a letter by Matthew Murdock to the Sisters of the Oracular Order.

* * *

 

Overseer Foley concluded the bruising made the whole thing look worse than it was. His nose was not out of position and it required a few day’s rest. He gave him something for the pain, a month’s worth of powders for his migraines, and sent him on his way.

He was kind enough to tell him where his new rooms were located. It could not be expected that he should keep the ample chambers he'd left vacant two years past like a thief stealing away in the night. As a matter of fact, he was surprised he was allowed a privy chamber at all. He hoped, at best, to share with another officer, but could have just as easily been banished back to the barracks like an unruly child. Nathaniel Essex’s patience with his ward was not a well run entirely dry.

Scott managed to glance around the room to take in the plain walls, his clothes all neatly folded in the dresser or hung in the closet, and the bed, light, and clock it had been furnished with. The adjacent bathroom had a humble round wooden tub, rustic only in its design. It was connected to the water supply, same as the sink and toilet. Carrying buckets of water up the stairs would not be part of his punishment.

He collapsed on the pallet over the eggshell covers and the eggshell pillow like a green and black eyesore, blood-stained and fully dressed. His red spectacles dug into his tender nose and he could barely spare the energy to roll off his belly and soften the pressure.

A shrill alarm he had not set woke him precisely five hours after his sleep had taken him into the Void. Five hours was already more than the three he was usually awarded but his body remained in its stubborn state. It refused to feel refreshed by anything except a full day’s rest. There was a note in the High Overseer’s crisp handwriting gingerly placed over the button to dismiss the ringing bell that had woke him. Scott reached further along the nightstand for the pitcher of lukewarm water and filled a glass to take his medicine with before he read it.

_Come to my rooms before the sun is up. You have an hour after the clock goes off._

_-_ _N.E._

An hour gave him time to bathe. The water was pleasantly warm, he could kick his legs up over the rim of the tub and sink down to the nape of his neck. Soapy crests sloshed over his clean shoulders. There were public springs in Tyvia that warmed you as deeply as a bowl of soup in your stomach, but what his tepid wooden tub lacked in splendor it made up for in privacy.

He opened the window in the bathroom and let the brisk night wind dry him while he washed his face and combed his hair. Scott didn't have to wonder why his guardian had called on him so early. They were to meet before the day shift begun, he would be given his schedule and with it his assignment. He _could_ waste time hoping for a place in the foyer giving sermons to the congregants, or another apprenticeship with the artificer to more closely study his trade, or even the title of astronomer again— allowed his former place among the star maps.

Perhaps he should hope. Dreams would be good to have after being named torturer and executioner.

Logan _was_ a gift. A training dummy. Warfare Overseers were reared to be soldiers, they had the makings of excellent swordsmen and marksmen. With close combat training, they could throw a punch when the situation called for it. Basic training. They fell into specializations later in life, as they earned their place within the Abbey’s hierarchy. Pathfinders, Scholars, Artificers, and Physics were the most common, but there were plenty of niche skills to choose from.

Essex had been an Inquisitor and he wanted Scott to follow in his footsteps.

Beating someone was one thing. Knowing when they're telling the truth, like Matthew, was helpful. But extracting information in the name of the Abbey took a distasteful sort of _refinement._ Scott had never wanted to be Inquisitor, but he didn't have a choice. Even as he'd fought it and gotten a post at the tower reading signs from the Cosmos, even after he ran away to Tyvia and distanced himself from the _honor_ of leading a life comprised of screams and iron, being an Inquisitor had always been a stain on the horizon coming ever close, ultimately and depressingly inevitable.

Scott walked to his guardian’s room and thought of everything that was good about his new post. Inquisitors were defenders of the faith. Nearly every High Overseer, with their two or more specializations, had put a notch in their belt with the title. He would get to travel often, visit Abbeys from Serkonos to Morley. In a few years he could put a word in, mention his unique chemistry with Matthew that made pairing them common sense. Friendly company would be as welcome as a patch of sunlight in an otherwise miserably cold existence.

Scott sighed. He exaggerated his own demise. His guardian was likely threatening him with the future he _knew_ Scott wanted least of all to scare him straight. He would bounce back from this. Eventually.

The High Overseer slept in the biggest chambers in the whole building as it befit his station. Two grand oak doors with golden knobs and proud lion heads to guard them stood stiffly in Scott’s way. The lions’ eyes watched him, growing gradually disdainful towards his cowardice the longer he hesitated to knock.

He knuckled out a short tune and held the doorknobs on either hand. He pushed both doors open without awaiting a response, knowing they’d be unlocked if Essex was ready to receive him, and then rocked back on his feet to close them. Like a dancer carrying out practiced steps, he bowed low to the High Overseer as he saw him, taking tea in his favorite armchair. He smiled at Scott’s perfect poise, set his cup down on the saucer and stood to greet him.

“Scott! At last, we have a moment in private. Come, I've been so eager to see you.”

Kohl liner had been freshly applied to darken his eyes. In place of his uniform, he wore a long shot silk robe with swallow-wort pattern in eye-catching violet over a pale lavender background. His bare feet swished back and forth through the slits of the robe as he urged Scott towards the tea table. Essex was not ready for the day’s events, freshly bathed but not yet dressed.

“I hope you still like biscuits.” Essex teased, piling biscuits with custard cream onto his plate for him with an air of nostalgia, as if Scott had been taken from him as a child and not left as a grown man of twenty-one years.

“I still like biscuits.” Scott smiled. He bit into the cookie and chewed thoughtfully to prove it. “I apologize for not reporting to you as soon as the heretic was apprehended, Excellency. The physic ordered immediate rest.”

“Not to worry, I would have been too busy to receive you even if you made the trip to my office. We have worse things to worry about than a witch who cannot die if you can believe it.” Essex tipped back his cup with an outstretched little finger. His face wrinkled in displeasure. “A gang led by a sorcerer has formed, calling themselves the _Brotherhood._ They do not show me a moment’s peace.”

Gangs were another common and ugly factor of Dunwall life. They took over whole streets and districts, making themselves known through calling cards. Any group big enough to be called a gang needed a clever figurehead to keep their activities just on the side of legal and to escape capture. Smart men were the City Watch’s concern, smart witches on the other hand… He could see a jurisdiction dispute alone causing problems.

“Brotherhood, you said? Are they openly mocking us?”

“Yes. Their leader has some grudge against the Abbey. Dead wife, I suspect, it's always the wife. You know how it is." Scott knew, but he didn't like his guardian being so insensitive about it. “He is a powerful sorcerer, Marked and unfortunately willing to share.”

“A weakness, then.” He supplied helpfully. There was a Shared in the prison block, the girl Matthew had tried to protect, and her connection to the Essex case was a given. “If he shares his Mark then his own power is diminished. Fighting him should be simple. In the event of his capture, you could sever his connection to the Void and all his extensions along with it.”

Essex laughed. “While I am glad Tyvia did not freeze your brain, you are missing important context. As the Keystone of the shared Mark, our man makes sure he's never alone. My field agents tell me he is a forceful beast even when sharing his magic with others. Killing his thralls while working our way forward feeds his bloodlust as the magic returns to its source. We are in a precarious position.”

“I am sorry. Of course, you would have thought of everything— I jumped to conclusions." Scott flushed.

“Goodness gracious, Scott. There's no need to frown so tightly." Essex laughed, he leaned across the table and rubbed at his brow furiously enough to start a fire. “It's already going to be hard enough to find you a good match, I don't need you developing premature wrinkles while you're at it.”

“A good match?” Scott perked up, thinking of Matthew’s place in his fantasy Inquisitor’s agenda.

“Yes. I am hoping Lady Emma Frost will have you, but she's more likely to take offense than your hand when pre-contracting rumors about you and Lady Jean Grey make the rounds.” Essex spoke wistfully, as if Scott were in on his plans.

The blood drained from Scott’s high cheeks until he was pale as rice paper. Fear buzzed in his stomach, unraveling, slowly as poison. His heart jumped anxiously and almost brought up the single bite of biscuits and custard cream he had managed to down.

“You intend to have me betrothed to another woman?”

“Of course.” His guardian said flippantly. “After that little stunt you pulled Jean’s never going to take you back, and I've always needed you to breed above your station.”

He spoke about Jean like their relationship had been a faulty transaction. Scott stood so quickly his legs knocked into the tea table. “Sir!”

“Sit down.” Essex said sharply, the sweetness gone from his face and the lilt of his voice. “Jean Grey is as good as dead to us. You haven't the skill to woo us back into her good graces. I always thought you understood my wishes and aimed to meet them, but I know now that if she ever liked you, it was completely by accident.”

Shock held him like leaded weights. The word _us_ remained strikingly stagnant in the forefront of his mind. He had never looked at Jean in terms of what she might do for his father. He assumed a High Overseer was on higher ground than a courtier or a civil servant. It seemed Essex’s interests lay in the fruit of their union, namely children that would no doubt inherit Jean’s estate and Scott’s special senses. Prime recruits for the Abbey. His gut wrenched at the thought. He could not refuse his guardian but he could not sit. In his belly, from where the fear had formed, came something darker and brighter, a blinding hot flash that sent his body into a fever. He almost didn't recognize the acrid taste of pure, incandescent anger dancing on his tongue.

“I understood.” His mouth shaped words like pottery, fine ceramic things miraculously formed after a decade of holding his tongue. “I understood she was everything and I was nothing. I could not offer her money, titles, or land. I would not have her suffer a life with less than she deserved simply because I loved her—"

“You would not have _starved_. Her dowry would have bought you all those things and my money would have bought more—"

“ _Her_ dowry, _your_ money.” Spat Scott. “Nothing of mine. A roof over our heads I would owe her parents or my guardian. I would be a husband without merit.”

Essex gave a throaty laugh. He crossed his legs and lay back on the arch chair with the saucer and cup above his lap, lazily swirling the tea bag in the amber liquid. Any signs of budding displeasure in his guardian had all but vanished like Scott had given him an apology and not shouted in his face.

“Congratulations are in order. You are right on all counts. Your only mistake was thinking there was anything you could do about it.” He set down the cup after taking another long sip. “Now David Alleyne is set to become the youngest Vice Overseer the Abbey has ever seen and he will be given all the accolades deserved from such an accomplishment. Not you.”

He supposed that was meant to sting. He had been given every opportunity, provided with only the best education since his pilgrimage to Whitecliff. All for the purpose of one day being the youngest Vice Overseer in Dunwall and in the Isles. At twenty-three he was younger than most anointed by a decade, but David was four years his junior. If he became Vice Overseer Scott could not exactly catch up to him. He should be devastated by the news. His life’s work: gone. His foolish quest for respect and influence in Tyvia: for naught.

He felt inexplicably relieved.

“We can talk about your marriage and the grandchildren I expect to succeed any union later.” Essex clipped. “Right now you’re not presentable enough to meet a woman. Especially one like Emma Frost.”

Scott touched his nose without thinking. To obscure the ugly bruise his guardian found so insulting. He chastised the childish motion and made a fist at his side.

“What are my orders, sir?” He asked. It was his turn to hold all the cards, his chance to wade through the muddied waters of their relationship, ignore the barbs and show he could still serve his High Overseer obediently. He chose not to take it. “I assume I will not be asked to face a corner until I am no longer revolting to look at.”

The table rattled as his guardian stood, the hard line of his jaw taut. He reached for a file sitting on the nearby vanity and tossed it into Scott’s chest. The High Overseer’s seal lay embossed in wax at the top of the envelope.

“I am stressed and exhausted, and you— You forget yourself. I will forgive us both for our failings. Mine grow more evident every passing day."

Scott flinched. He had been scolded as a child for acting out as a child but knowing it did not lessen the sting. Though his words were unkind, this was the only man he had enough memories of to call father. He would not relent his ground, his outburst was justified— but it hurt to disappoint him.

“Dismissed.” Essex said coolly.

Scott took his leave, dejected now that the heat had passed. The color washed off his face and the tight tips of his knuckles. _Standing up_ to his guardian wasn't as satisfying as he'd imagined it. He felt baited, hooked, and then tossed aside, deemed being too small a fish to fry. Essex had looked down from the tip of his nose and decided he wasn't worth arguing with about his own future. He hadn't thought to ask his opinion in the first place. That spectacle must have felt like vindication. Too young to be consulted about his marriage, too immature not to shout over tea.

The file was nearly ruined in his fists. He freed it from his death-grip and flattened out the wrinkles, but it was too late. The folds remained, glaring. His first task and already he was making a mess of it. Something as minute as sloppy paperwork could cement Essex’s mistrust in him. He hadn't even brought the heretic back without breaking his face. He needed a win.

Scott couldn't think about walking to his office, breaking the seal, and reading through the stack sitting heavy inside the envelope before the eight o’clock shift. It would be the responsible thing to do, and it would make Essex happy to see Scott taking a serious interest in the work. But even though their conversation had been mostly about insulting Scott’s life choices, setting him up with a woman who’s name he was hearing for the first time, and dismissing him from his office with the dignity of a kid being sent to his room, what their talk had managed to spark was not a refreshed sense of duty, but the urge to see Jean. She had been his support system every time he and Essex fought, or when Essex fought and Scott stood there and listened, and she always knew what to say.

 _Jean._ He just wanted to see Jean.

Like a flower surviving darkness and cold yet withering with grief at the first sign of the sun, reminded of all the warmth and light it had missed, being in the same city as Jean made him ache. He walked like a man possessed by a force stronger than witchcraft through the halls of the Abbey. He picked up a shoulder bag on the way and disappeared the envelope inside it. His feet led him to the reception area, where one of his Brothers startled as he ambled into view and put his arms on the counter separating them.

“Did Jamie Madrox leave a message for me? For Scott Summers.” He was quick to amend his own familiarity.

“No, sir.” Said the Brother, shaking his head vigorously. “None at all.”

Jamie had asked Scott to wait. He would take him to see Jean. He would show him the way. But he could not wait, and he could find his own way with what little he knew, even if it meant wandering the Civil Services District all morning while he was on the clock.

“If he comes, tell him I've already gone.” Scott told the receptionist, patting his hand on the counter and pushing off towards the door.

“Sir!” His Brother’s chair screeched. “Where shall I tell the High Overseer you've gone?”

“Out.” He said and closed the door behind him.

***

It was not an aimless walk through the Civil Services District. His mind had cleared once the Abbey was far behind him. The suffocating responsibilities faded, though he carried them to some extent in the leather suitcase hanging at his waist. He could connect the dots and build a picture based on educated guesses. Jean wanted to work in a respectable hospital, appreciative of her credentials and significant education, an establishment that held itself to higher standards while still being serviceable to those most unfortunate. The second biggest hospital in the area had that reputation. It took less than a couple of minutes of questioning men at market stalls for them to crack open like enthusiastically helpful nuts.  No one liked an Overseer with questions, even one asking for directions, it was better to help him with his business quickly than have him linger and build suspicion.

Which is why he didn't find it odd when he reached Jean-Paul Beaubier Hospital and a nurse, with just one look at his uniform, dropped a tray on the floor. The receptionist at the front desk, a woman much later in her years, scolded her with a sharp hiss and waved her hands over her so she would pick up the mess. She faced Scott with an angry flush on her weathered face and curtsied as if he were a lord.

“What can we do for you, Brother? Are you injured?” She asked, not quite rising from her curtsy. Unlike her colleague, she was not fearful of him, but nervous. The nurse gathered the fallen instruments back onto the tray, but instead of fleeing she remained fixed like she had been ordered to.

“Not injured, thank you for your concern. I am looking for a young lady. Curly red hair, green eyes,” He nodded towards the nurse and her tray shook. “Roughly her height and build.”

“You're looking for Doctor Grey.” The woman said with strange conviction and greater resignation. Scott would have brightened at her name, but it felt unprofessional. The dowager was proud and elegant even with her head down and he didn't want to disappoint her with his childish enthusiasm. 

Finally, the young nurse found her courage. “Doctor’s not been here for weeks. No one’s seen her since.”

“Her patients are seeing someone, and I haven't seen _them_ here either since. She's holed up in her house up the hill, past the cemetery.” The woman informed him quick like a guillotine, startling both Scott and the nurse with her tone.

“Anne!”

She sidestepped, forming a barrier between the nurse and Scott. “Forgive her, Brother. She doesn't know what she's doing. I will take her to the Abbey myself and she'll learn better I swear it. She will meet Brother Murdock and he will explain— She did not mean to be dishonest.”

Scott blinked, feeling distinct as though he'd missed a disturbing amount of the conversation. At Matthew’s name, which the woman had accompanied with a chastising look over her shoulder and a touch of two of her fingers to her brow, the girl looked directly into his red eyeglasses and her fear sunk into a panic.

He understood, dimly, that there had been a horrible misunderstanding. It appeared Murdock’s gift was known among the common folk, as were his red lenses. What was an aesthetic preference only they favored had been mistaken as a symbol of Matthew’s gift, and therefore Scott’s. He had caused a stir between these two poor women, and he knew stopping to explain it would only cause them more discomfort.

“Please, there's no need to apologize.” Scott said gently to defuse the intensity of what was supposed to be a painless conversation. “I have what I came for, thanks to you, and I will be going. If you do decide to visit the Abbey, Brother Murdock is a friend of mine and I am certain he will… assist you. It's always good to see young faces.”

The woman let out a long exhale and she curtsied again, this time with the nurse mimicking the motion a little more awkwardly.

“Thank you, Brother.”

“No thank you, ma’am.” He said, bowing mechanically in return. He nodded at the girl. “Miss.”

He ran out of there as if the building were going up in flames, flustered and flushed across his collar. It was times like those he found the Abbey’s teachings to be inherently contradictory to the reality it had created. The Abbey of Everyman _served_ every man, it dispensed them of their fear of the dark and supernatural influences. But if nurses, _civil servants_ were frightened near tears of them, and bowed their heads not out of respect but in hopes it might spare them from being punished for an unknown offense… Something had gone wrong.

Scott sighed. The faults of their system were a problem to be examined another day, preferably by someone more qualified than a scrawny, black sheep of a Brother with little to no influence at present.

Jean was on the hill, past the cemetery, and Scott was going to see her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who commented on the last chapter. Whenever I hit a roadblock I reread your comments and think about how much I want to make having read this silly fic worth it. ♥


	5. the apple never falls far

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott runs straight to Jean and straight into trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one has a cliffhanger because im a bad writer and i enjoy writing badly. (this is a joke please love me)

**5**

**CIVIL SERVICES DISTRICT, DUNWALL**

**_6th day, Month of High Cold, 1851_ **

“We’ve washed our hands from our young and ignored them into adulthood. We’ve accepted that children will die in this world and thus stopped trying to save them.”

— TO ROYAL INVENTOR FORGE

From the desk of Empress Ororo Munroe with regards to the reconstruction of the low towns.

* * *

It was the ninth hour and Dunwall was waking. Street sweepers lined his path like roadmarkers, warm paper cups in one hand. Empty display boxes labeled _Bread, Vegetables,_ and _Fruit_ were hauled out by burly men in clean white aprons, ready to be stacked full. It was the most activity Scott had witnessed since his return, exempt the crowd escaping the heretic, as people had shut themselves in all the prior day. Now Dunwall was alive, but sluggish, like the unfurling of flower petals still wet with morning dew.

The Civil Services District had once been a home away from home for the wealthy elite and their children, but since the Munroe dynasty had implemented a merit-based system more commoners had taken up the banner of civil service. A collective handled the local problems with more experience than their predecessors. It made for a colorful place, where gentlemen scholars could sit across their colleagues in greased overalls and speak plainly of policy— before one or the other was called away for tasks more stereotypical of their background.  Not all things could be changed within a single generation.

It was a short way to the hill, but Scott could not make his feet tread any faster. His spirit soared so lightly, trusting that in a moment or two he would be seeing Jean— so _light,_ so very, very light _headed_ he could hardly stand.

The City Watch was setting up for the shift change, but one look at their uniforms reminded him of Jamie, left behind despite explicitly warning him against it. Guilt wrung him in knots, he rubbed the back of his neck and hurried past the Watch men without wishing them a good morning.

The cemetery was small and modest. He skirted around rather than through it though it would have been faster to cross it. Mourners and gravediggers claimed their place within the wrought iron square, and Scott had no stomach for death today— even the peaceful aftermath.

He found Jean’s house when the cemetery was long at his back and felt better for it. The image of Jean with only ghosts as her neighbors did not sit well in his stomach. There was a bewildering amount of space, a park’s worth, between her house and the nearest busy street, with a trail that rounded the hill and fell back to connect them. It was unlike Dunwall’s cramped architecture and stifling city planning to give this much room to anyone outside the Estate District. Jean’s home was a two-story structure in a pale shade of teal and midnight accents. Built on a foundation of brick, with latticework framing the stairs leading to a dark oak door. The paint was far from fresh, and the wind chased a peculiar smell downhill. Not unpleasant— but old. It had been pretty in its prime, but not enough to be the home of an heiress. He could see Jean purchasing modest holdings if the benefits outweighed appearances; if it was close to her work, or her parents home, or the market— but it was none of those things. It was just… Lonely.

Isolated, little details wouldn't have nagged at him. The curtains were drawn, though respectable houses would have them open at this hour, the grass hadn't been trimmed in a few days, dust and leaves littered the porch. It looked abandoned. The house asked a lot of questions. He was starting to think he'd been misled, but mostly like he should have waited for Jamie in the Abbey.

But really, when he looked at in a less apocalyptic light, there was a simple explanation to eliminate all foreboding: The house had no servants and it was too big for Jean to look after on her own. If she chose to sleep-in it was natural for the drapes to be shut. She was taking a leave of absence from work and possibly all of society. He could empathize. Armed with temerity, he gathered the courage to march the steps and stare down the door.

As soon as his knuckles touched wood, he realized he had no plan. Jean, in his dreams and fantasies, had already forgiven him by the time he conjured her. His longing for her during those first few months was like surrendering his heart to the Void— and _he_ had left _her._

“Jean!” He knocked violently, scared more of the gutless child in him, ready to turn tail, than rejection. He was loud, in case her bedroom was upstairs and she did not hear. “Jean! It's Scott!”

There was a standstill during which Scott laid his hand flat against the door and willed his Void sense to do more than feel for witches. He urged the vast emptiness of the abyssworld to bring him visions of rumpled bed sheets and slippered feet coming down the stairs, things his powers weren't meant for. Suspended in a breath. Caught in silence. Victim to an overzealous imagination that stopped short of letting Jean open the door and bound him in a promise to wait _just one second longer._

There was barely a sound outside the sudden, quick steps across hardwood and the shimmy of the doorknob. She opened the door in a whip of white cloth like meringue at the end of a spoon. Red curls tumbled over her shoulders like so many roses, kissing her freckled face in handfuls. Wide, green eyes deadlocked him on the stoop. She breathed like she'd ran down the ornate stairs. Her slippers had caught on the rug and folded it over itself, dragged it halfway to the door. She fell against the frame, knees bent.

“Scott.” She said, in a voice solely reserved for speaking in dreams.

Jean stumbled into his arms and he caught her, lifted her off her feet by her thighs and held her not like a child, but a lifeline, knowing the moment he set her down it would all rush back to them. Her skin was soft from sleep, rubbed tender and flushed by the mountain of pillows she favored. A nightcap had fallen on the rug or been tossed in a hurry. Red curls trickled over his face, the sweet-smelling oils in her hair cloying as they tickled his nose. Things one could not properly replicate in a memory.

He cataloged the differences quickly before he was forced to part with her weight. Sleepless nights made her vibrant eyes heavy and dark. She stroked his jaw and there was a strange texture to her hands, calloused but smooth in parts like she'd worn down the grooves of her prints. Jean was pear-shaped, plump, but she felt thin in his arms— The robe fit as though it was a recent change.

She traveled down his chest, to know for sure he was real. He saw the moment she regretted it. She framed the white collar of his Overseer’s uniform and her dimples smoothed, shuttering the brightness of her welcome. Her parents were prestigious backers of the Order, but she was indifferent at best where the Abbey was concerned. Maybe more so after Scott had left her to serve it. Jean tucked her hands into her long sleeves and crossed her arms over her chest, retreating past the threshold of her home without inviting him inside. She spoke to the buttons of his jacket.

“How long have you been back?”

“Came into the city midday yesterday.” Yearning nearly drove him to explain he would have been at her doorstep half an hour later if it hadn't been for the hunt. Logan’s body twitching like fresh fish on the cutting board and Essex’s indifference, they'd both proved Jean was one of the only precious things in Dunwall. He persisted swiftly, too lily-livered to avow the possibility she might ask the dreaded _Why are you here?_ “I came to see you as soon as I could.”

It was her right to close the door in his face. Coward is the man who commits to the pen what is too intimate to say in paper. He had scorned her with that letter, regardless of how sweet and well-intentioned the words it contained.

“What happened to your face?” She asked.

“I was put to work right away.” He imagined the street closures hadn't reached her district. News could not travel quickly to her little house on the hill.

“Have you applied ointment to the bruise?”

“Not today.” He said truthfully.

Jean tucked her mouth to one side and glanced privately over her shoulder, flipping her hair to hide it. The house was a little short on splendor, not dirty by any means, but not tailored for receiving guests. Scott assumed that worried her. He didn't care for the presentation. He only had eyes for her. That she was contemplating letting him in put him on his toes.

“I have something that might help…” She stepped away from the door and walked some distance before she remembered Scott wasn't the type to come in uninvited. “Come with me. I stock supplies in the cupboards.”

Jean’s kitchen was as comfortably spacious as the park the house sat on. Around the room were tall cabinets, strips of wood with short black hooks for pots and pans, shelves of porcelain plates, and a sink. Scott was a hazard near a stove and he thought Jean was an excellent cook, but he would have eaten a brined sandal if she served it.

There was a table at the center of the kitchen and he was bid to sit in a chair while Jean rummaged through the cupboards. He'd missed his morning meal, but even a glance and a whiff towards the colorful fruits in the centerpiece could not open his appetite. Tea and biscuits with Essex sat uneasily in his stomach.

He required permission to enter her home and also, it seemed, to speak. The tension between them was a fine mesh, allowing for looks and touches as fleeting as a breeze, but words like the ones they needed to exchange could not fit through it.

Jean found quickly what she was looking for. She carried a short, fat container of green glass with thin, yellow watercolor flowers on the label. Her fingers scooped up cream and beckoned, guiding Scott to raise his chin. She lathered the mixture onto his bruised nose while he tried not to flinch, still tender to the touch. He could not watch her face whilst she worked, focused on him, even through his shades and her thick lashes her eyes were too intense to hold.

Framed silvergraphs beside the kitchen door drew his eye. Having missed them when they came in, he inspected them with curiosity. Scott counted five in total, possibly several years old as Jean’s aunt Cecilia was still alive in a picture of her and Jean’s parents. He scanned over Jean’s debut portrait, a photo of her and the Empress on her coronation date, her very first lab space, coming lastly upon the final frame: Jean and Scott during the Fugue Feast, flushed and nervous, experimenting with a silvergraph machine during the worst possible time of the calendar year— a period which could not legally be recorded in any shape or form. That silvergraph, if correctly dated, could be evidence of a crime. But Scott had never taken any silvergraphs with Jean outside that day, and it was likely the only image she had left of him— there, on display.

Scott flinched away from that corner of the kitchen. There were other, surely more interesting things around to contemplate that didn't drive a fine-pointed needle into his heart. Some of the cabinets had clear glass windows full of interesting trinkets— like… Like hard liquor. Scott’s brow furrowed. Jean did not drink often, and when she did she preferred something lighter than whiskey. They were both the same in that regard. Every brew he recognized was whiskey and then some, alcohol with a kick that'll put you out in the street. So her tastes had changed. That was to be expected. He thought he could make out a box of cigars too, among all the booze, open and missing three out of the five it boasted containing. Beside that was back door. It opened to a garden because there were shears and empty flower pots in a neat row on the lower end of the whatnot beyond it. On the door, there were three hooks, each hanging a different flannel shirt. Men’s shirts.

He thought it was clever of Jean not to use her own clothes for dirty work like tending to the garden. Very responsible of her. Jean stopped her ministrations, perceiving what Scott was watching. She turned to liquor cabinet, the door, and the whatnot and stood very still. She cleaned her fingers on a wash towel and set the ointment back in the cupboard. When her eyes came back to Scott he knew for a fact that these things that did not seem like Jean’s were, in the Cosmos’ honest truth, not her’s at all.

“We need to talk.” Her lips tightened together.

Scott thought he was ready to hear it. Before he was Jean’s lover he was her friend, and friends understood when they’d forfeited rights to be _jealous_. He felt cold, as though the black-eyed creature of the Void caressed the back of his neck and tipped his claws at the base of his head. His cheeks and throat tingled with an acrid taste. He’d been ready before Jean’s embrace, her gentle hands on his bruises, the silvergraph by the door— But he wasn't ready now to hear about the man who lived under this roof with her, drank hard liquor, and kept garden equipment for a lawn no one tended to.

“I'm sorry, Jean.” He said and stood, alarmed at the wetness of his voice.   _I’m sorry,_ he said, for leaving, for abusing her hospitality, for betraying her privacy with his errant gaze, for backing her into a corner where she didn't have the choice to speak to him on her terms. “I shouldn't have come.”

“You're still your own worst enemy.” She sighed.

He didn't know what she meant, but he recognized the pattern from years before. Jean, in her eternal benevolence, believed all of Scott’s mistakes came from a place worth more pity than rancor. As far as Scott was concerned, if she would not hold him accountable he would do it himself.

“I'll come back some other time— On a better day. Or perhaps you could come to the Abbey at your leisure. Yes. Or send word with Jamie Madrox, he'll know where to find me.” He hurried to excuse himself, already backing to the kitchen door. His shoulders knocked into the silvergraphs and he slapped his hand over them reflexively to stop them from breaking. 

“Scott, you're already here. Let's just have this conversation and get it over with. If you need me to be angry: I am. If _you_ need to be angry, I will be less understanding, but a row is better than silence. We're friends.” She touched his arm, prying his fingers away from the frames, which were all perfectly fine. 

“I can't talk. Talking will not accomplish—"

“How can you say that?” Jean’s face warmed as it did when she was upset.  “We're in this mess _because_ you thought running off to _redeem_ yourself was a better idea than having a conversation with me!”

“Because you would have convinced me nothing was wrong!” He shouted uncharacteristically, frustrated by his eloquence suddenly abandoning him. “You—"

Sharp pain in his knee interrupted him with a scream. Scott raised his leg, then put it down again when the pain intensified. It was his left leg, his dominant side. The inexplicable pain heightened fiercely no matter the sort of movement he made but trying to twist it was particularly tear-jerking. He reached down instinctually and his fingers wrapped around the end of something solid and cylindrical. It had ripped through his pants and meat, lodged into a bloody circle. Scott could not safely remove it, and shock had left him incapable of moving at all.  _What?_

“Laura!” Jean pushed past him in her soft white robe and gathered another bundle of white in her arms. It struggled and bawled like a cat in a bag, and in a little fist that managed to wrangle its way out of Jean’s hold, there was a penknife identical to the one currently stuck in Scott.

He fell on the ground, bending a knee in time to stop the floor from stabbing the rest of the pen clean through. The penknife had torn through _something_ and moving around would come back to bite him later, but he could not stay upright. The pain was _scorching_. Scott braced against the door frame, squinting in Jean's direction. He realized, with no small amount of astonishment, that the bundle was a little girl, seven years old at least. She had a strong nose and tan cheeks, hair as black as tar. She was filled with unmistakable rage. She bared her teeth like a wild animal, hacking at the air with the pen still in hand until she thought to toss it instead. It spun in the air until Scott blocked with his arm guard, smacking it across the room.

“Laura, please. He's not going to hurt you.” Jean spoke calmly, trying and failing to hug the young girl against her chest. She folded her hand over the girl's flailing fist and brought it closer to lock her arms to her sides. She made horrible, yowling sounds, nothing like a child’s voice should be.

“Men in the uniforms— They took daddy.” The girl finally broke down and tossed her thin arms around Jean’s neck and then widely over her shoulders, giving Scott the impression that she was not looking for comfort or protection, but blocking her from him, shielding Jean from danger.

 _Laura_ , Jean had called her Laura.

Jean stroked Laura’s back and pressed her cheek into her little head. She crooned another promise of safety. Wrapped up in each other, they’d forgotten about Scott except for the threat he represented for the girl’s distress. One moment he was a guest in Jean's home and in another he was an outsider. It would have stunned him more if he hadn't been trying to make himself as much before the knife interrupted. He could not make out what Jean was saying, or Laura’s mumbled protests, obscured by the short breaths that wracked her body, he did not take the pause to inspect the wound on his leg, or labor to stand, because between Laura’s shoulder blades, above the back of her top and red as an open wound, was a Heretic’s Brand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments, kudos, and bookmarks are all incredibly motivating and appreciated.


	6. fair exchange is no robbery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean treats Scott's injury and new facts about Logan come to light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please mind the graphic descriptions of violence tags! Mentions of needles/surgery in this chapter.

**6**  
  
**CIVIL SERVICES DISTRICT, DUNWALL**  
  
_**6th day, Month of High Cold, 1851**_

  
  
“I encouraged Scott to act on his attraction to Matthew. He was flustered but, eventually, he agreed. I think it will be good for him to know a warm touch from someone other than myself. It worries me that he might consider his love for me the logical reimbursement to my kindness, the first he ever received.”  
  
— JEAN GREY’S DIARY  
  
Written at the age of eighteen.

 

* * *

 

Jean knelt, Laura bundled on her lap. The young girl no longer struggled, swaddled by the smell of her hair, of safety. Jean stole secret glances at Scott and at the wound in his knee. Blood dripped consistently from the end of the pen. The pain could not be excruciating enough to bewitch him outside his body, but it was vacant, a hollow structure. He showed signs of blood loss or perhaps shock. There was a new pallor to his easily flushed face. If the pen had severed an artery, they would be in trouble. Scott would bleed out faster than she could stop it. Laura would have known where to strike to bleed him, she had at least that much skill, but she lacked the intent. She had to believe she did.

Scott’s mind was very much fixed to his body but fractured, like light through drops of water. Pain had left him. The brand had disappeared from sight, wrapped beneath Jean’s arm, but it could not be purged from memory. One line across, three vertical prongs perpendicular to it. It conjured a question that had never before occurred to him:

_What happens to children accused of witchcraft?_

Because there must have been many. Children were malleable, impressionable. The Witness fed on the desperate, and who more desperate than the youth raised in dark, stormy Dunwall? Street urchins, orphans, victims of every form of abuse with hands barely big enough to hold bonecharms— lambs to the slaughter.  It would not have been _popular_ to parade them across the foyer. He had never seen these lambs in the interrogation room or the holding cells. They could not be taken for pilgrimage, tainted as they were, they could not be sent to Coldridge—the Empress would not allow it. There were juvenile facilities under her reign, where young delinquents were sent not to be forgotten but rehabilitated. There was a chance, a slim one, that the witch children ended up there. _Yes._ That had to be right. The question felt silly in retrospect.

It _had_ to be right. He couldn’t consider an alternative. Surely the blood would never, _ever_ wash off.

Except.

How did the brand come upon Laura’s back?

“Laura, sweetheart, look at him.”

Laura refused her, she looked opposite to him and hid her face against her shoulder. Jean tucked her hair behind her ear like pulling back a curtain. “Isn’t there something familiar about him, something you recognize?”

Laura faltered, but she trusted Jean. Her shoulders shrugged to better cover the bottom half of her face as she turned towards him, brow furrowed. Round eyes like black pearls fixed on his uniform first and tensed the soft lines of her face. This child, branded a heretic, had reason to fear the Overseers to the point of hysteria. It wasn’t difficult to make the connection. It frightened him, as he did her.

The shoulder strap on his bag was choking him. He wrestled it over his head and realized how unsteady his movements were. If he wasn't already on the ground, he might have collapsed. The bag slumped against the wall.

“Fugue Feast?” Laura mumbled, finally looking past his collar and taking in the sharp angles. Similarities were blurred and outright lost with the state of his face, it showed Laura’s keen eye that she could see past the bruise and the shades, even the grey lines of stress. Her calm upon recognition was short-lived. She shook Jean by the front of her shirt. “The Overseers took him. I _know_ they did. I saw—”

“I know, baby, I know.” Jean could not be dissuaded from trying to pull her closer. She took Laura’s hand and laced their fingers together so her small palm locked into hers. “But not this one. Scott will not hurt you, and he's not taking anyone away. Isn't that right, Scott?”

It rattled him to be spoken to, as he’d shortly become accustomed to being a fixture on the doorframe, a piece of bleeding furniture. He was a man, a man in the position of Laura's personal monster. She had Jean’s word he was a friend and yet he dressed like the men who had taken her father away and possibly burned a heretic’s cross on her back— that much he'd gathered. How long ago? For what reason? There were things he did not know, and the blood trickling into his boot made it harder to focus.

“You lost your daddy? I lost my daddy too.” He said nonsensically, leg slipping on the hardwood floor until he thought hard to keep still. “I was very scared...”

“Laura, I need you to get me the suitcase I keep beneath the bed.” Jean cut in after him.

Laura tilted her head but did not tear her eyes from Scott. “The one with your doctor things?”

“That's right. Scott is losing blood. He needs our help.”

In Scott's opinion, there wasn't need for any hurry. It was not a whole _lot_ of blood. A dizzying amount, for some, but barely cause for concern. Laura shared his apathy towards the wound. It couldn't be worse than the mark on her back. She gathered her robe in her fists to free her legs and extract herself from Jean’s lap. On her knees, Jean grabbed her shoulders and kissed her on the forehead.

“Go now.” She said urgently. Laura needed a nudge in the right direction, apprehensive as she was, unwilling to leave her guardian alone with him. She realized the faster she moved, the faster she could return and she went scurrying like a mouse up the stairs.

Jean rolled up her sleeves and crawled to him on her hands and knees. She put her ear to his chest and listened to the erratic thumps of his heart. White slippers sidestepped around the blood pooling into the crack between two floorboards, branching out and filling the gaps like a river rushing through canals. After a deep, shuddering breath, weighed down by more than the problem sprawled in front of her, she stood.

“I am going to move you. It's going to hurt.”

Scott wanted to tell her that nothing she did to him would ever be unwelcome, or that he had long accepted the reality that was perpetual pain. It spiked through him as Jean pulled his arm behind her head and raised his weight onto his feet for a hair-raising instant before she lifted his body off the ground from the waist and relieved the pressure on his leg. She held him against the bump of her hip like a child. His face colored, embarrassed by how wieldy it was to carry his scrawny body back into the kitchen. Jean’s biceps were far more impressive than his. Taut and defined. Mouth-wateringly distracting. Pain struck his leg again as if to scold him.

She bent him and his improper thoughts over the table and pushed until he slid along its length. Scott held the decorative bowl of fruit over his head and stopped it from getting uncomfortably close to the edge until Jean took it from his hands. The buttons of his jacket dug into his chest, belt buckle leaving a mark beneath his navel. She tugged off his boot and sock after removing the garter, stepped back to take a look around the kitchen and grabbed a big pair of scissors from one of the wall hooks. She cut upwards from the bottom of his pant leg to expose the end of the penknife and get a preliminary look at the damage. The sharp edge tore through his clothes so easily he didn't have time to flinch as half his uniform was destroyed.

Jean’s breath whistled through her teeth. “It doesn't look deep and I don't think the knife hit an artery. You're bleeding a lot, but it will stop. I have elixir in my supplies.”

“To drink?” Scott said hopefully.

“For a shot.”

He groaned. At least he wouldn't have to taste it. Elixir left a bitter tickle in your throat you could never get rid off quickly enough, but taking it intravenously felt like introducing acid directly into your bloodstream. He would rather rinse his mouth.

Jean stroked his calf while they waited for Laura to return. It might have helped ease his physical pain, but it awoke something different altogether in the process. Her kindness— Scott had never been good at taking kindness.

“What’s he like?” He asked quietly. Jean’s hand stopped on his ankle.

“He's a good man.” She conceded hesitantly.

“I know that. He's with you, after all.” Scott laughed humorlessly, aiming to lighten the mood and missing the mark. “So. What happened? Wrongful arrest?”

It didn't happen often but it happened. Overzealous young recruits could mistake superstition for witchcraft and condemn a man to an undeserved fate under false pretenses. Scott _knew_ he could help with that.

“No.” She crushed his clean, simple fantasy of heroism like so much glass underfoot. “By the laws of the Abbey, he is guilty of his crime.”

“I am sorry to hear that…”

Jean’s nails scratched thin lines on the table, thankfully a better canvas for her frustration than his skin would have made. “If the stars are as just as they claim—if the universe _truly_ demands balance— then the Abbey will be punished for its crimes as well.”

Scott closed his eyes as if it would make him any less of a witness to her blasphemy. He liked to think he wasn't as stiff as his Brothers when it came to freedom of speech—Cosmos forbid the people be allowed _contrary thoughts_ — but he could not lie in the event he was questioned about her. Literally. They had ways to make men talk. They wouldn't trust Matt to be an impartial judge of his honesty. If Jean’s… partner had been arrested for witchcraft then as a known associate she was likely being surveilled in the event she displayed similar leanings. She could be in danger. He could be _putting her_ in danger.

 _No more so than her lover already has_.

That petty thought burrowed within him for longer than he was comfortable with, it bubbled upwards shamefully like whale oil in a tankard of water.

He made his voice smaller. “What happened?”

Jean pinched the bridge of her nose and spread her fingers over her eyes as if rubbing away the soreness of a headache. Her brow twitched uncomfortably. Pain caught in the wrinkles around her lashes. Scott watched over his shoulder as she raised her head and fixed on a point beyond the room, unblinking.

“Laura knows not to speak to Overseers. She knows to be polite but always, always keep her head down.” Jean swallowed. “They lured her out with a wolfhound. I should have known. She had been asking for a puppy… It must have stalked the house for days. I am sure she saw it and got the idea in her head. I still hear her screaming when I close my eyes.”

“Why take her? She's a child.” Scott asked, unsure whether he should press her but not heeding his doubt.

“Bait. She wasn’t really their target. I wanted to wait for— for help. He wanted to find her as soon as possible. With good reason. You saw what they did to her...” Jean choked on her sentence.

“The brand.” He finished for her.

“They had her for a couple of _hours_.” Her voice wavered. She fumbled to put her hand over her mouth, fingers trembling. Scott’s body responded to her pain, he felt  a shiver in his chest as if a draft were moving through his rib cage. “We found her outside the city walls. Of course, it was a trap. That's when they took Logan.”

_Logan._

Just like that, like gears in a clock, the stars aligned precisely where they needed to be.

“We only got away because they didn't chase us. The Abbey needs us here so they have something to threaten Logan with. He would want me to leave.” Jean continued, unaware that dots were connecting for Scott on her table. “Fool.”

“On whose authority was he arrested?” Scott pried sounds from his throat, forming a question he did not want the answer to.

“High Overseer Nathaniel Essex.” Jean said, giving him no time at all to adjust to a reality in which his mentor had allowed a child to be used as bait.

 _Thunk, thunk, thunk_ . The suitcase made the same exact sound as it fell the length of each step. Laura dragged it down the staircase, sometimes hitting the back of her ankles with the heavy piece of luggage. It was too big for her, more suited to Jean’s upper body strength. Laura had made a valiant effort getting it thus far, but her tan skin had flushed a deep red from the exertion. Jean left him alone in the kitchen to assist her the last few steps, and Laura was adamant she only _help_ and not take entirely over a task that had been assigned to her.

As Scott occupied most of the space on the dinner table, Jean cleared the nearby counter by moving things to a higher shelf. She made room to open the suitcase in a way that would not obstruct her access. From his angle Scott could see the full contents of the case but he could make out the phial of blood red elixir, flowing thickly like magma. He could only assume it held similar first-aid necessities, but that phial was the worst of his worries.

He was forced to reconsider his position when Jean produced a silver coated syringe with a truly frightening needle from the kit. Laura hugged the edge of the counter and stood tall to watch her.

“This is going to be ugly and unsanitary, Scott.” She warned. “But I will do the best I can. If I don't use the elixir, you could have permanent damage in your leg.”

She was right. He couldn't return to the Abbey with a hair out of place without people asking questions. If he came back with a limp he would be sent to the head physician and he would leave no square inch of skin unexamined. A gaping stab wound would not be missed.

“Please. Do what you have to do.”

Jean nodded. The point of the needle sank into a soft circle where the cork would normally be. The plunger pulled back slowly and Scott heard liquid moving into the container. Jean’s fingers fit perfectly into the little circular handles at the base of the syringe.

“After I inject you with the elixir I'll have a few moments to remove the pen at reduced risk of you bleeding on my oak.” She smiled to the effect of a sedative. Scott smiled back reflexively. “On three.”

She went on three, no tricks. He took in a breath as the needle pierced skin. He was good with that sort of thing, needles and the like, he just didn’t like being sick. He didn't like needing medicine.

The elixir _burned_ just as he'd expected it to. The prick of the needle was nothing compared to the feeling of meat mending itself around the knife, like ants crawling over his bones. Jean spread the wound and plucked the pen out. Blood stained her right hand and the end of the knife— but at least the table was clean. Scott bore the uncomfortable tickle of the elixir until its ugly work was done, leaving him with a brand new patch of fresh, hairless skin. Jean dabbed at his leg with a rag, wiping away the evidence from flesh, but not cloth.

“You're going to need a change of clothes.” She flicked at the flaps she'd made from his pant leg. “Maybe something of Logan’s…”

Scott chuckled, he sat up on the table and rubbed at his knee miserably. It was numb, static ran up and down his calf.. “Doubt anything will fit.”

Jean laughed and then simply stopped stiffly like a wind-up doll out of crank. Her hand dropped from the case lid to the edge of the counter and Scott watched as her fingers wrapped back around the knife. “I know why that's funny. How do you know why that's funny, Scott?

“I met him.” He said hurriedly, before Jean could do something she would regret. “When I reported in yesterday I was immediately sent in pursuit of a heretic. He had escaped from his cell and eluded security.”

“Escaped?” She gave herself pause before her spirits could rise. “But recaptured. You met him.”

“We barely managed it.” Shamefully, he placed the blame on more than himself. There was a _we,_ definitely, but _he_ was Logan's keeper.

Jean sighed. “If anyone could do it without resorting to child endangerment, it's you.”

She dismissed his role as incidental better and faster than he could have planned. She had nearly complimented him.

How was he to say he’d hit Logan below the waist and mostly kept still for him while he beat his head in, only to be rescued by his men. He swallowed the image of Logan choking on the harpoons.

“He broke my nose.” Scott brushed thoughtfully over the bruise. She might be comforted by that. Logan was still strong enough to swing and land.

Laura snickered into her sleeve. She shrunk behind a chair when he looked at her. After his eyes lingered too long she bared her teeth and ground them like a threat. Cute kid.

“How is he?” Jean asked, softer.

“Banged up. He's not popular.” Scott admitted. “I've been ordered to use him in my training to become Inquisitor.”

“Inquisitor? That's the last thing you ever wanted to be.”

“Nathaniel is displeased with me. I am out of his favor.”

“The best place to be, if I am honest. Two years will do horrors to a control freak.” Jean leaned back against the counter, scoffed. Laura came closer and hugged her leg.

“Two years, and the fact I haven't, uh,” Scott made quotation marks with his fingers. “ _Bred above my station._ ”

She nodded knowingly. There were many things about Nathaniel that never seemed to surprise Jean, though they shook Scott like snow down the back of his collar. “I thought he'd be upset that we broke up.”

“Is that what we did? Break up.” He said half-heartedly, somewhere between playing it off and meaning it, but altogether regretting it the moment he'd said it.

“I broke up with you," Jean grunted. “Sorry I didn't send a letter.”

It stung and he deserved it. It was nice to see Jean meant it when she said she could be angry at him. Her anger was justified, he welcomed it. She had earned it. His guardian, on the other hand, had not, and his had met much dimmer reception.

Jean tapped her fingers on the counter. She fit her shoulders into a line and tilted her chin. It could not make her a head taller, but it could communicate _business._

“I want to know more about Logan. Will you tell me?”

Scott considered the way she held herself as if she expected him to deny her. There were many reasons for her to doubt his loyalty, and it would be a long time before he managed to stop reinforcing the preconception that he was more an Abbey man than he was her friend. Unbeknown to Jean he had been searching for ways to repay her kindness to him from age twelve, and given that his affections had proved both insufficient and undeserving of her, the only thing he could do was find justice for her little girl and the man for whom her love had not waned in the last years of her life.

Static shot up his leg like he'd been sitting on it for hours. He waved Jean off as she reached to help him stand. Sooner or later he would be on his own and he couldn't expect her to carry his weight for much longer. Limping, he walked around the table to where he had dropped his shoulder bag. He set it down on the table between them and slid it across like an offering.

“There's a folder in there with all the information I've been granted about Logan.” He said. Laura scraped the chair on the floor and climbed up to get a better look as Jean unclasped the bag and slid out the folder just enough to read the name on the corner. _L. Howlett._

 _“_ I haven't read it yet,” Scott confessed. “You'll know as much as I will.”

Jean stroked the letters. They were typed, small font, fairly standard print for information they couldn't risk being smudged or misunderstood. She came to Scott and hugged him as if he'd brought her a great gift. Given her timeline and forced isolation, this was likely the only news she'd had in a while.

Laura, who shared her guardian’s sentimentality on the issue, reddened brightly at the face as tears like blood from pin-prick wounds filled the corners of her eyes. She opened the folder and spilled its contents on the table. Jean looked up as if to chastise her, but her eyes were immediately drawn to the wreckage of information Scott’s bags had spat up.

There were dozens of medical forms and diagrams marked in red and blue, all filled in Essex’s neat handwriting. Scattered among them lay silvergraphs, the smaller ones that were more quickly developed. Scott squinted, unable to make out what they were until he picked one out and held it to his face.

White, charcoal grey, and black. Brushstrokes overlapping into a broader image. Lines and curves that were familiar, but he couldn't place. The color of ink. Black like midnight. On a strictly greyscale medium, he could not determine if that was accurate. The material caught light slickly.

Jean gasped and put her hands over her mouth. She gathered the rest of the silvergraphs quickly and stuffed them into a fold she'd made with her robe over her lap. Just as precipitously, she pointed Laura to the stairs.

“Laura, go to your room.”

The young girl’s mouth opened incredulously. “But—"

“No _buts._ ”

Scott heard her leave, but he could not watch her. Jean’s haste to gather the evidence had confirmed for him what he held. It was easy for her to pluck the last silvergraph out of the tremors in his hand.

“Is it—"

“Yes.” She said hastily. The silvergraph turned slowly for him, it had been dated and tagged with the subject's name.

Scott nodded. His tongue felt like a fat lump of dry sand in his mouth. He was looking at a close-up of Logan’s chest cavity absent his heart.

 

* * *

 

The vehicle entrance was swamped with delivery trucks before lunch. Scott could not slip in in civilian clothes without being spotted. He could not get past the receptionist as his father had probably ordered the man to report back to him as soon as Scott made his way home again. His best bet? Blending in with the morning mass crowd as they headed for the foyer. He kept his head low as they shambled in from the square and pocketed his shades even if the whale oil lamps burnt his retinas.

In a few minutes, after the common greetings, men and women would gather in circles around a Brother to hear his sermon. After mass, they would break up into smaller circles with multiple Brothers to ask for their wisdom on personal problems. The whole ceremony was usually lead by someone with experience, credibility, and devotion to his work.

Someone like Matthew.

He caught his sleeve before he could commence the service. “May the light of the Cosmos bring you peace and clarity, Brother.”

“Scott?” Matt asked, confused. “What are you doing?”

“I need the key to Logan’s cell.” He whispered.

Matt cocked his head towards the nearest Brother and listened to make sure he was too busy to bear witness as he shouldered Scott somewhere slightly less populated, like the hall.

“Are you crazy?” He felt Scott’s chest. “Mercy, what are you wearing? I have to tell your father every time I let you in that cell. I don't know what you're up to, but I doubt you want him to find out.”

Scott sighed and dragged his hands over his face. He could see the keys hanging off Matthew’s belt, shiny and inviting. “I could steal them.” He blurted.

“Don't _tell_ me you're going to steal them.” Matt sighed.

Scott unhooked the keys from Matthew’s chatelaine, requiring only minor assistance from the man himself as he participated in his own robbery. He closed his fist around the keys and ran.

“Thanks, Matt!”

“And for my sake! Please steal a uniform from my locker while you're at it!”

 

* * *

 

The prison block was quiet as death when Scott walked in wearing Matt’s uniform. His friend was some inches shorter than him, but it fit fairly well so far as he loosened his collar. It was the tailoring of the suit and not his nerves that choked him. So long as he made that the reality, he would be better for it. 

The only sound was from the music boxes at every corner of the room, spinning round and round their melodies. Under the whale-oil lamp casting a sickly glow on him, Logan looked worse for wear than when he’d left him, impossibly worse than a dead lump of meat. He was strapped down, nearly naked, with a leather muzzle buckled so tight around his face it put a dent on the bridge of his nose. There was a half-moon’s worth of space for his nostrils, but his breaths still came out in harsh, uncomfortable bursts as it was hard for his chest to rise and fall with the bands covering it.

“Good morning.” He said softly, working his voice over the low scratching sound of the boxes. Logan opened his eyes and looked right at him. His brow furrowed. “I apologize for… this. I am sure it’s not necessary.”

Scott looked around the room for something to cut Logan’s bonds with. There was a table to his right, pressed up against the wall, and on it where surgical instruments in clear glass boxes. He flinched away from them. There were no scars on Logan’s chest to indicate he’d been cut, but there hadn’t been any when he was skewered from end to end either. He could not trust Logan’s body to tell an accurate tale. He could trust the silvergraphs, and his own instincts of what his guardian and father was capable of.

Logan's hard eyes did not convey a modicum of trust. There was no indifcation the tone of his voice had gotten through to him at all. If anything, it had likely only heightened his suspicion Scott was here to do him harm. It was better to not destroy the equipment either, lest they blame it on the prisoner. The straps were buckled to the table where Logan was forced to lay stiffly, slanted for the convenience of his visitors to get a look at him upright. Scott wanted to get rid of the muzzle first, and of the strap that made it hard for him to breathe. He came up behind the table and Logan’s fists clenched, likely frightened.

“I am not going to hurt you. I am just here to ask you a few questions.”

He cupped the back of Logan’s head and lifted it to quickly take off the muzzle. Logan worked his sore jaw open widely, licking the dryness from his lips. Scott went for the straps around his chest and abdomen next, tossing them over the edge of the table where they could not leave such angry red marks on the man’s chest. Logan’s wrists had to stay tied, unfortunately. At least until he could talk to him for a while longer. He felt compelled to rub at the irritated skin, like when he helped wax Jean’s legs sometimes.

Taking advantage of his new range and Scott’s proximity, Logan’s nose pressed at the delicate spot beneath Scott’s jaw and ear, _inhaling_ like an animal probing for his scent. Scott jerked as if bitten, his back hurled into the table, scattering equipment across trays. His heart, usually only betraying him by virtue of adrenaline or injury, beat quickly fueled only by _bashfulness._ His fist curled over the breast of his jacket like a dowager clutching at her pearls.

“What are you—”

“Cocoa.” Logan sniffed. “Heady. Little bit spicy. The kind of smell you wish you could eat.”

Logan's fangs poked through his lips. His muscles tightened and stretched the length of his bonds. He rumbled, rough enough to make craters in thin air.

“You wanna ask questions, bub? Then you answer me why you've been speaking to my _wife_.”


	7. close but no cigar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott and Logan talk, man to man. He explains to him what he and Jean discussed. Lines are drawn in the sand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im sorry these chapters r short ive hit a rut

**7**

**EN SABAH NUR SQUARE, DUNWALL**

_ 6th day, Month of High Cold, 1851 _

“My dear, I fear for you in that castle, overindulging on the nectar of high society, growing ever more irritated by the petty quips of socialites you could once so easily dismiss with civility. It was you who said to me:  _ Let us never lead such tedious lives, so devoid of other entertainment, that insipid conversation should be considered the most offensive use of our time _ .” 

— LETTERS FROM A WITCH   
Fragment of a letter signed by the Witchmaker. Confiscated by the Royal Protector herself. 

* * *

It was not proper that Scott should feel so flustered and out of sorts in the presence of a prisoner who knew his very safety relied on the whim of his captors. Logan’s future cooperation required a degree of delicacy for which he was underperforming— but there was only so much one man could take on a day. So many firsts thrust upon his lap: his first reunion with Jean, the first time he had ever been stabbed with a penknife, seen the Heretic’s Brand on a child, and been scented by a disturbingly capable nose. 

These were things that he could have perhaps foreseen if he had known young Laura’s inclination for the blade and her father’s hound-like instincts, but he could have never, ever in his life anticipated to covet another man’s wife.

Scott had been accused many times of having a less than subpar dexterity to conjure compliments as it was common in high society. This was not to mean that he could not appreciate the beauty of those who presented themselves to him if prompted for study, but it would not come naturally unless his attraction was so intense it could not be contained. Like a tea kettle, his heart would grow warmer and warmer until it came to a boil and a whistle. Jean and Matthew were the only two people to ever experience this phenomenon firsthand, and even then Scott’s outpouring came with the airs of someone wholly resigned to be jilted, as he knew others in love even less than he knew himself. 

Given that high threshold of attraction, he was not one to look upon  _ anyone _ with the same frequency of other’s his age, much less someone already engaged. Nevermind it was prohibited by the Abbey, his own moral code would not allow it. And  _ yet _ . Despite all his determination to retain purity of mind and soul, his feelings for Jean did not simply evaporate upon learning she was a married woman. 

“Your wife.” Scott repeated, as though it might sink in on reiteration. 

The older man squinted at him. Scott half expected him to snap up again, tear out his throat this time. Instead, Logan laid his hands flat and then showed Scott his palms, fingers spread, as in surrender. “I understand.We had a deal. I stepped out of line. Message received. No need to go pay her any more visits.” He tried to disguise it, but Scott saw the way his nostrils flared. There was a scent on him, something Logan did not like. The air stumbled and rushed out of his chest. “That blood? Is that blood?”

The prospect pushed him through stages of emotion that ranged from horror to rage in the span of seconds. Scott did not expect this sort of man’s anger to be cold, but it was dizzying how quickly he could strike his own match. 

“It's mine.” Scott quickly doused. “All mine, sir.”

“Don't smell any fresh wound on you.” Logan said wearily. His thick muscles throbbed like chords. 

“Jean patched me up.” Scott touched the back of his knee meaningfully. “Young Laura, she stabbed me with a penknife.” 

Logan’s surly face beamed at their names. The chords relaxed as if struck by dulcimer hammers. His smile, crooked by the impulse to hide it, was all pride. “That's my girl. She'll cut you again if you go back. Won't miss this time.”

“You misunderstand.” He said earnestly. “I did not go with any intention of hurting Jean or the child. I went as a… friend, just returned from overseas.” 

The crooked smile widened, fangs peeking. “Oh, yes. Jeannie told me all about your trip,  _ friend. _ ” 

Scott closed his eyes behind the privacy of his shades. He suspected Logan knew of his desertion, as Jean’s husband and confidant, but it pained him that she had trusted her heart to him. Logan's tongue had a sharp tip, the torture had done little to blunt it. For that, at least, he was glad. Scott could forgive the familiarity of petty jabs, it was fair trade for their clear power imbalance. His eyes opened. 

“You should know, Logan, that I am Jean’s truest friend despite what you might think of me. I am to be your friend, too.” 

“How's that?” Logan grunted. “You gonna feed me poppies before you cut me up unlike Mister Sinister in the high tower?” 

Scott paused for a moment to consider that nickname unmistakably meant for his High Overseer. After what he had read, and the horrors that man had planned for Logan, alongside the many other abominable crimes he’d been accused of and which now Scott could clearly see him committing— it was a simple thing to agree with it. Stars preserve him, Essex had not even given the man poppy. Poppy was  _ dirt cheap  _ in comparison to the anesthetics that had replaced it in recent years. This cruel experiment— this  _ vivisection  _ had been carried out with the intent of being in part physical and psychological torture. Sinister was the only word to describe it.

“No, Logan. By my honor and with the force of the Cosmos as my witness, I intend to free you from this prison.”

 

* * *

_ Hours prior, in Jean Grey’s home. _

Shock had sobered her beyond tears. The pictures she held in her hand were more graphic than any surgical text was allowed to be. Red-inked notes took meticulous account of Essex’s work as he snipped open her husband. Thorough as he was, he had even written down how her lover, fully conscious, had bitten off his tongue after drilling too deep into his head caused a seizure. She feared for the state of Logan’s mind, but— 

There was no room for fear. Only her  _ anger  _ would free Logan from that torment. No space left in her chest for a scream, drowned as she felt in sorrow, Jean swept her hands across the table and sent flying the evidence to release the tension. She ground her slippers into the wretched pile of bloodied vellum, caked in red that was  _ not  _ ink, wishing she could toss it in the fireplace and burn it, burn it all away. 

Scott said nothing, letting her tear papers out of his hands in her fury. In these last few days, after suffering the disloyalty of his brothers, and being branded with the blood of their gleeful violence, what he felt as a member of the Abbey was a deeply entrenched  _ shame _ . Words could not convey to any accurate measure that the system that had raised him was more overwhelmingly  _ cruel _ than it was useful, and he by extension. 

Jean had found her voice within the papers she had discarded. It crinkled in her tight grip, then stretched to near tearing. Her eyes bulged as she went over it twofold, held it at arms length, then closer. It was a new page of light blue vellum Scott had yet to come across. Essex’s notes were hard to digest, he often backtracked full paragraphs because his mind had gotten lost in the process. 

“I know what he wants to do to him.” She passed him the page. 

Scott turned his head away and breathed out his mouth. There was a picture clipped to the page. The top of logan's head, minus his skull cap, blood shining as bright as the glare of the sun. He was not a delicate man, having trained with surgeons in his lifetime, but the sight churned his stomach. 

“He has been experimenting with the effects damaging or removing certain parts of Logan’s brain had on his behavior.” Jean pointed at a line that had been underlined three times over. “Essex seems particularly vexed that Logan retains all his memories.” 

“He wants to wipe his mind? But why?” 

“Our memories are everything, Scott. They determine our loyalties. We are all nothing but a schema of cause and effect scenarios leading to associations that in any other form could make us entirely different people.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and he faltered at her meaning. “If Logan doesn't remember anyone, then he has no friends. Then he is Essex’s toy alone.” 

That kind of manipulation— It seemed excessive. Didn't sit well with him. Ethically or practically. “He’s clearly a valuable clinical asset,  _ already _ is that even with his memories."

“Read.” Jean snapped. “Essex goes on to say Logan’s connection to his magic is not memory based, and that it will not be affected if he undergoes permanent memory loss. His connection to the Void remained even when he cut off his hand and shut off his brain. The Void is beyond Essex’s understanding— but it will serve his purpose. He says it will  _ serve  _ his purpose.” 

Scott was reminded of an earlier passage, where Essex spoke about Logan’s docility after trauma to the frontal lobe. He had marked him down as pliable, obedient. Essex was pleased. Scott rubbed his chin.

“He wants Logan to serve him… He wants to use his magic?” He forced it as a question. It would be better suited as a statement. How could he strongly deny the evidence when there was so much precedent for Essex utilizing magic against magic, more so than any of his predecessors? His inclination for experimentation, innovation, and yes, manipulation… It brought Scott a primal satisfaction that things should connect so well. There was, however, an alternative hypothesis. “He could be trying to cure it.”

Jean laughed. “Cure Logan of his magic? Magic is not a sickness. The Abbey calls for  _ restraint _ , it thinks it a choice.” 

“As is drink, as are opioids, as is—" He stammered. “Adultery. To act upon our desires is a choice, and sometimes the  _ only  _ one, to become addicted to them is a sickness. Surely you can admit the world would be a better place without the temptations of the Witness—” 

Jean raised her hand to silence him. “I will not discuss the Witness with you, and I won't have you make excuses for this… this… butchery.” She spat. 

“I do not excuse it. No results are worth this.” Logan was not one of the Weepers, dying of the plague and willingly donating his body to science, though Scott struggled to believe that tale under the blinding spotlight now shining on his guardian. He was a victim of abuse and negligence. “I want to help him, Jean. I need to know  _ what  _ I'm protecting him from.” 

Jean wrapped her hands around the back of the chair. She chewed on her lip, stretched out her arms and lowered her head. Scott recognized the motion, often a sign of Jean’s frustration. She came back up in reverse. 

“You will get him out.” 

“Jean, I can't simply liberate a w—" He protested. 

“You can, and you will. In a  _ proper  _ court with my testimony, and the scars on Laura’s back, Logan would be pardoned and apologized to by the Empress herself!” Jean shouted. “Child endangerment, gross abuse of power,  _ torture _ —" 

A flicker of motion caught Scott’s eye. Through his shades he could see Laura, her tiny face squeezed against the railing at the top of the stairs, but she could not know she was being watched. She had a well-worn blanket with a frog embroidered in the center and wrung it in her hands as if to squeeze out something tangible and safe from its threads. It wasn't hard to picture his Brothers luring her outside the park, putting a bag over her head, stealing her away from her family. It wasn't far off from what they did to the few unlucky non-orphans before their pilgrimage to Whitecliff. Right down to returning Laura and the young recruits to Dunwall with brand new scars. 

No amount of dexterity with a knife should ever be required from a child as young as her. No child should be without either one of their parents when both wish to protect and care for her. If he hadn't left Jean, maybe it would be their little girl on those stairs. Scared. The only thing Scott knew for certain is that it didn't have to be. Not for him to do the right thing. 

“Did you take his name?” Scott asked softly. 

Jean put her hand on her hip and tossed her hair back. Impatient with his line of questioning but curious to see where it would go. “He took mine.”

Scott didn't know why that made him smile at the same time it made his eyes water. “I will do everything in my power to return Mr. Grey safely into your arms.”

=

Matthew burst through the door just as Scott finished detailing his conversation with Jean to Logan. There was a short, tense moment before Logan recognized who had interrupted them and relaxed back on the slab. No surprise there. Matt was known for his kindness to prisoners, even if in the Abbey that was seen as a negative. But he had a reputation of being deeply devout, so his  _ quirks  _ were forgiven with ease. 

Matt turned the lock and flattened his back against it. He was agitated, out of breath from running. “You need to do something.” 

“Do something?” Scott tilted his head. 

“Yes. The High Overseer is on his way. That big-mouth Frederick told him you were out all morning and only just came back.” His lips thinned unhappily. “Essex is talking about  _ neglect _ . He's thinking of replacing your assignment.” 

He cursed. Scott touched his nails to his teeth and chewed. Losing access to Logan right now would devastate any possibility to help. Matthew could not sneak him in near often enough to plan anything and another party, likely in Essex pocket, would make the going difficult.  Essex expected Scott to torture Logan. He wanted him to peer review his findings. He was to replicate everything that had been done to him. All to prove his guardian right, so he could take the next step of steel-plating Logan’s frontal lobe and making him into a faithful dog. Without all that pesky personality.

He could not imagine performing an autopsy on someone who still  _ breathed. _ Cutting that T, pulling back the skin… it was already unsettling on corpses. Scott had read  _ those  _ notes. Logan's heart would not stop beating even after he cracked his rib cage open.

His eyes landed on that wide, furred chest and suddenly he knew what had to be done. 

Scott grabbed Matt by the jacket and turned him towards the door. “Stall him.”

“What are you going to do?” 

Scott went for the table and started looking through the sharp, pointy things for something that would best suit his purpose. He turned the lidded jars to read the labels and set one aside containing something gel-like. He grabbed a long, wide, flat knife and twirled it to test its balance. 

“Just— Trust me on this.” His eyes met Logan's, so warm and brown, like two pieces of butterscotch. "Trust me."


	8. it is as it must be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Essex and David threaten Scott's plan to free Logan, and Matthew is pulled into the fold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying for shorter chapters so I can get more done. Reviews & kudos are welcome and appreciated. Please forgive any spelling mistakes.

**8**  
  
DISTILLERY DISTRICT, DUNWALL  
  
_6th day, Month of High Cold, 1851_

  
  
“Expect the worst of people and you will find yourself forever safe from misdirection– as well as utterly alone. No alliance is formed without first taking the risk to trust another."  
  
— Excerpt from an interrogation log at the Abbey of Everyman.

* * *

 

Scott tensed his wrist to avoid anything but long, smooth flicks of the blade across Logan’s skin. Sweat pooled at the nape of his neck. Logan’s breath wavered, his fingers curled to fists and released flat against the operating slab. He turned his eyes skyward. Moisture glistened the blade and made for a smooth caress. Matthew stepped back and skittered to the door. The first scrape of the knife had given Scott’s friend pause, but upon realizing where his head was at Matt gave him the room. He stood in attention, waiting for the low voices coming down the hall to catch up. Scott traveled from collarbone to navel in quick motions matching his mentor’s imminent arrival. _One more stroke_ , he told himself, _one more and it will be believable._

David Alleyne opened the door and out came Nathaniel Essex, no longer in his morning robes. The High Overseer and the young man remained deep in conversation, near oblivious to Scott’s disheveled presence trembling over Logan’s prone body, unsure whether to continue his ministrations or pay his mentor the courtesy of a bow when he did not yet seem interested in word or curtsy.

“Where would you find the time for service in this noxious place, David?” Essex’s scented handkerchief pressed beneath his nose. Scott knew it smelled of oranges. “It would be cruel and unusual for this post to be assigned as punishment, and yet I find my best men eager to volunteer for its upkeep. Utterly ridiculous.”

David closed the door, thrilling with a birdsong laugh and holding one hand over his chest like bluejays might sprout from his ribcage after a giggle. It was disarmingly charming, captivating to even the worst sort of narcissist by the look on Essex’s face.

“I admit, I am drawn to the talent within these walls, Brother Murdock and Brother Summers are among the fastest rising stars in Dunwall.” David said, sounding humble to the last word.

“And what bright stars they are, isn't that right, Scott?” Essex finally looked at him from above his handkerchief of embroidered orange blossoms. It was at David’s behest that he remembered Matthew and him existed. “I see you haven't completely wasted our time, prepping the witch for dissection.”

Indeed, Scott was nearly through shaving the hair on Logan’s chest, which gave the impression his replication of Essex’s experiments was already on the way. They had no cream or soap and the blade left thin red rake marks in its wake. His mind recalled Jean’s skin as he'd kneeled at her feet and waxed her legs. The moment had been warm. Intimate. Scott, crooked over her husband's body as poor executioner was a parody of the same. Essex came forward to curl his fingers in the remains of Logan’s chest hair. Critical eyes lingered on the absence of blood drawn for sport. All the tools on the table were pristine… if thrown out of place. Essex saw much. Since Scott was a child and had tried to check out books beyond his clearance with his guardian’s badge, he knew to always check what Scott was hiding behind his back.

“What happened in here?” His guardian asked with a humorless smile.

Scott was forced to acknowledge the nearly overturned table and instruments strewn on the floor. In his brilliant plan to disguise his intentions, he had forgotten the man’s outburst. Words leaped to the tip of his tongue. What lies could he tell that would not present him as unprofessional and careless? If he told Essex Logan had snapped at him, he might make it so the sorcerer would not move another muscle for the rest of his short life. The Abbey’s truth serum had the added effect of paralysis, sometimes permanent, and it would be the most cost-effective way to keep Logan under control. An unforeseen spell of nausea made the bloodstained concrete dance to the unnerving tune of the music boxes.

“Forgive me, High Overseer.” Matthew’s cane stretched and tapped the table. “There was an accident earlier and I urged Scott keep to task while I cleared this mess shortly before you announced your arrival. The fault lies with me.”

Like floating timber to a drowning man, Matt extended the simplest explanation. It was all Scott could do to obscure the swell of gratitude he felt. Matt’s even temper and the small misconception that not only did he always know the truth but he could not tell a lie quickly mitigated any suspicion Essex might have held.

“No harm done. We aren't exactly risking infection with this one." His mentor laughed. He dragged his hand across Logan's forehead, mussing his hair back like he would a wolfhound. Logan was careful not to snap at Essex, a cloudy look in his eye revealing he was as far as his mind could take him from this place. Would that Scott could join him in blissful departure.

David looked to the clock on the wall. “High Overseer, it's nearly time too…”

“Yes, yes, you needn't fuss so much. I remember. It's not polite to keep our guests waiting when they can't settle in without my say so.” Essex chortled.

“Guests?” Scott said lightly. The prospect of more bodies in the base was unsettling. Spiriting Logan from inside these walls would be trouble enough already, they did not need the extra numbers.

“Delegations from Karnaka and Wynnedown.” His mentor clarified. Essex accepted the journal David handed him, he scribbled notes down on the page. It snapped shut before Scott could lay eyes on its contents. He could guess its purpose by the size and how David carried it. A memo book, or an agenda, either way, Scott was a concern Essex had scratched off his list for the day. If he could get his hands on that… he would know when and where his mentor would be at any time. That book was full of possibilities he could not afford to be misinformed about.

“They arrive for the Conclave?” Scott asked, flush with bewilderment. Each year the Abbey of Everyman held a Conclave in which headquarters all across the isles sent a choice few to the capital to discuss the future of the Order late in the Month of High Cold, which wasn't due for another moon. “I can't imagine Serkonos and Morley have nothing better to do with their Brothers than make them sit idle in Dunwall for weeks.”

Essex’s brow furrowed. He took Scott in from top to bottom. His ill-fitting uniform, hair out of place, body broken and bruised. Scott cowered without moving a muscle, unable to stomach the chagrin it would cause him if he were to falter under his careful watch.

“My boy, you have spent too long at sea. The Month of High Cold is already upon us.”

Scott would have taken it better if his guardian had spit on his cheek. He detected a note of pity in words Essex had chosen too delicately for one of his temperament. _Too long at sea,_ he said, _too many blows to the head,_ he meant. Scott should have seized the opportunity and build on his guardian’s good mood while he could, but his pride forced him back to face Logan.

“I am too occupied to account for the passage of time. May the stars guide and protect your fate, High Overseer.” Scott said dismissively. Matthew tensed at his error, but Essex simply sighed as if obliging a child.

“Time will heal all wounds, between us and otherwise. It is time for you to pay it more attention.”

Essex left without a proper goodbye to match Scott’s bitter well wishes, but his fledgling shadow idled with a hand on the door, the other cradling the journal their High Overseer was too good to carry on his own. David ducked his head respectfully.

“Brothers, may I break words with you both tonight?”

“We are very b–”

Matthew’s elbow dug into his ribs and winded Scott before he could snip any further. There were yet bridges between them and David and Scott would not help anyone by burning them.

“Of course, David. You’re always welcome to come to us.”

David laughed. It faded as his eyes caught on Logan’s form. “I would not ask if it was not important. It concerns a witch, and a matter I cannot bring before the Overseer.”

Scott’s mouth dried, the blade edge dipped beyond deliberate path and jerked Logan out of his stupor with a hiss. Scott switched knife with palm, smoothing over the sting of drawn blood and uttering an apology before he could stop himself in the act. His eyes bulged and stilled, beside him Matthew stiffened to match. Two threats collided from either direction. David, an unknown entity with the High Overseer’s ear and the Abbey’s indoctrination fresh in his mind, had information concerning a witch that Scott could not account for. His mind rushed to _what, where,_ and _whom._ Second, and more presently important, he had watched Scott _apologize_ in earnest to a prisoner for nicking him with the knife that was supposed to open his chest.

“Ah, forgive me, Brother. I flinch from the duties of an Inquisitor.” David said suddenly, hand already shielding his face from the sight.

“Blood disturbs you?” Scott asked carefully.

“Not when paired with the adrenaline of combat. Absent that, I am… dizzied. To say the least.”

Scott watched Matthew just out of sight, looking for the minute nod that followed David’s reply. The boy was not lying. Logan’s helpless state had truly muddled his senses, perhaps enough for him to confuse Scott’s misstep for some kind of strategy. One not worth reporting to the High Overseer.

“You're too young for this kind of trouble, David. Come back later when Scott is done and we promise to talk.” Matthew said in his most persuasive sermon voice.

It was like the air finally came back into the room after David closed the door. The three of them in unison slumped in place and sighed, but relief was fleeting. The Abbey was about to be mobbed with Overseers from every isle, observant and cunning, all looking for a way to embarrass the Dunwall headquarters. That was the _true_ purpose of the Conclave, to give those furthest from the throne an opportunity to either appeal to or lay waste to the current High Overseer. Scott understood what his true role was as Inquisitor, to stay well away from the spotlight where he could not stain his guardian’s reputation.

“My stars, I thought it would never end. I would call us all blessed, but if we were we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with.”

Scott could not share in the sentiment for long. He feared David and the things he might know about Logan. For the time being, he stood as thinly veiled threat. Scott tossed the blade aside before it could do more wrong and gathered supplies to clean and mend Logan’s wound, as his healing factor would not kickstart with the music boxes spinning their infernal sound.

“He knows something. It could be dangerous.”

Matthew’s touch on the curve of his spine was stabilizing, but distracting. He turned from it to pour disinfectant on a handful of cotton to dab away the blood on Logan’s rib.

“You must not see specters at every corner Scott. You are not alone in this. You do not want to hurt this man. The Conclave doesn't have to change that. I can tell Essex you're performing as promised and you'll never have to lay hand on him until another takes your place.”

Kind words fell on deaf ears. Matthew spoke of things he did not understand to a man who was yet loyal to his would-be father’s teachings and not the one standing before him. Logan snorted, coughing up a string of blood that tinted his teeth until Scott offered him a cloth and a sip of water. There were wounds inside him that had yet to heal, Scott could see it in his difficulty taking longer breaths and the bloom of sickly yellow-green bruises on his side.

This was public enemy number one?

Mired in frustration and helplessness, Scott’s fingers wrapped around the neck of a phial and lunged its weight at one of the music boxes, killing one voice in the choir. The next fell to a well-placed kick to its stand and smashed with a wiry screech. Each box made a sound like a soul leaving the body until there were none, forcing Matthew’s hands over his ears. Logan shook as the music’s hold on him lifted, back arching ecstatically as his body pressed to fix the damage they had prolonged.

Scott had his outburst without screaming, circling the room like a caged bull primed for slaughter. He ravaged the ugly fruits of _alchemy_ , nothing but witchcraft in disguise, made filthier for the hypocrisy of its use. Nathaniel Essex had poisoned the well. He would pay for making Scott complicit in the abuse of a child by shared bond of father and son. His crimes were Scott’s crimes so long as Logan remained shackled to that bench on his watch.

“I've never felt you so angry, Scott.” Matthew whispered. He took Scott’s aberrant behavior as well as anyone could. Better than Scott had taken news of the Conclave. _Matthew_ would be better suited for the destiny the stars thrust into his arms, but the fates had chosen Scott as their champion and he could not turn from what he knew, what had to be done.

“You misunderstand, Brother. I don't plan to sit idle until someone takes him off my hands. I am angry because I've made another impossible promise to one I hold as high as the sun. Impossible because _they_ know _everything_ and _I_ cannot honestly claim to know the shape the moon holds overhead!”

Essex had a network of spies and eyes on Jean’s home. He had to operate under the assumption that if his mentor didn't already know he had seen her, he soon would. He would be discovered. The stench of treason clung to Scott like perfume and his betrayal not even developed.

“Scott… What promise did you make to Jean?” Matthew asked, already knowing, because there was no one else so close to Scott’s heart.

Scott thought of all the things Matthew knew about him and what he did not. He thought deeper still of the things _he_ knew about Matthew and what he could trust to remain true after two years past. His friend was kind-hearted, just, and honest. He was the sort of man who would exile himself from the comforts of the Abbey to care for discarded heretics. He loved children. He loved Scott.

“That her husband would be free.” Scott admitted after a long pause that stretched longer. It was selfish to drag Matthew down with him, but his friend was right. He could not do this alone.  

“What you're insinuating is madness,” Matthew said breathlessly. He took Scott’s arm and held his index and middle finger over the pulse point beneath his palm, feeling for the thunder pounding in his veins. “And yet you mean it. Why?”  

“This whole forsaken place is full of madmen, it is only fitting I join their ranks. If I must choose between the madness that drove our High Overseer to brand a child without magic as Heretic and this... I know where I stand.”

Scott told Matthew everything he knew as they let the Void flood back into Logan.


	9. the chapter with matt in it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The prisonbreak gets just a teeny bit more developed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope u matt fans like this one ladies. I know my chapters can be short but reviews are appreciated they keep my head above water

**9**

**DISTILLERY DISTRICT, DUNWALL**

**_6th day, Month of High Cold, 1851_ **

“When Elektra died six hundred and twenty-nine miles away from me I knew that no duty in this world was worth losing a friend and lover."

Excerpt taken from Matthew Murdock's private journal.

* * *

 

What time was intended for Logan’s dissection was spent towards fixing the music boxes Scott had destroyed. Essex could not return to find the only things holding Logan’s magic stagnant had been decommissioned by his keeper. Scott freed Logan of his shackles and leather straps so the man could stretch his muscles without wincing. He half expected him to snap and attack, prefering to take freedom with his own hands once more than trust Scott.

Instead Logan sat on the bench and watched with his tired eyes as they reinstated the instruments of his imprisonment, more powerful than any bindings or locks.

“Why must I remain here another night?” Logan groaned. “If we all want the same thing…”

Scott righted the box’s stand and raised it onto its surface. “We cannot. I will have no more casualties. It would only spur Essex to chase you to the ends of the Earth.”

“If you're scared to get your hands dirty, then let's forget the whole fucking thing. A few dead Overseers won't weigh _my_ conscience none.” He spat impolitely on the floor, mouth soured by mere mention of Scott’s Brothers.

Scott reddened beyond reason. A hot lick of anger was swiftly overshadowed by shame boiling in his stomach. Logan was battered, hurt, afraid. The man was half-delirious. He was his _prisoner_ and his _victim._ His crudeness was as waves to a cliff, it would take years for it to compare to the power Scott held over him in that instant.

“Scott’s concern is not for our Brothers alone. If a prisoner escapes and is not re-captured within a week’s time, all others will be put to death.” Matt stepped in, attuned to the building turmoil.

Logan's head twitched towards the door. “Who?”

“A girl She was one of the Witchmaker’s Shared.”

Scott shuddered. He knew the girl was of the Shared, but not that the Witchmaker pulled her strings. He had heard tales of the man even across the Redmoor Sea. He was a legend, born of the ashes of a cult the Vice Overseer in Karnaca had razed to the ground. If the least gruesome of all the tales about him was true, then he was the shadow of death itself.

“Good.” Logan said. “We'll bring her along when we go. That way we won't owe the old man any favors.”

Scott’s mouth dried, tongue brittle as salt crystals. Logan’s sense of humor was more suited to the gallow’s than his operating table.

“What role does the Witchmaker hold in this?”

“He was going to get Jean, Laura, and me out of the city, but I was captured. Even he doesn't have the resources to get me out of this fortress. Now that we've got your help to get me to the door she's probably gonna tell him the deal’s back on. Don't worry, I know Jeanie. She'll make sure the extraction includes you too.”

“ _Me_ ?” There were many things to unpack there--Logan’s relationship with the Witchmaker, _Jean’s_ relationship with the Witchmaker-- but Scott chose the most pertinent for his sake.

Logan laughed. He threw his head back and made an ugly sound like a hyena choking on his evening meal. A laugh for pubs and gentlemen’s clubs. It was absolutely hideous, but so perfectly suited to the man it was more beguiling than aggravating.

“Don't tell me you thought you'd get to stay here after you freed me. Living your perfect Abbey life with the second prettiest redhead in town?”

“I don't appreciate being wielded as a weapon.” Matt said with the air of a man who knew he wasn't being listened too. His thumb stopped just before the blade edge of the scalpel he was feeling out to return it to the proper tray on the table. “But I do have to ask-- what do you think will happen, Scott?”

Scott, who didn't have much of a cohesive escape plan outside getting Logan from Point A to Point B undetected, stammered to find a response. Had Logan asked he would have produced a plan on the spot even if it was completely bogus to wipe the smirk from his smug face, but his friend’s voice had the bewitching timbre of a patient school teacher and Scott could not bear the lie.

“You don't know.” Logan breathed, with such disbelief it was almost a question. “You have no fucking idea.”

“I haven't exactly had time to plan in the last four hours where everything I knew to be true got turned on its head.” Scott found his pride beneath the deferential chord Matthew had struck in him. The only way he knew how to communicate with Logan was to feign superiority so the man would scoff long enough to be quiet and stop talking over him.

“If everything you say is true, we do not have the time to feel for ourselves.” Matthew intervened before Scott could raise any higher on his horse. He spoke as he did on the foyer when his voice carried to all gathered for sermon. “Scott, you're too smart not to have at least the skeleton of a plan. Speak and see it given flesh.”

Scott could not blame his friend for taking Logan’s side in this. He was being overly brief with him in hopes to spark conflict. Jealousy had buried a few leagues beneath his skin and made his chest into a nest of vipers that climbed his throat and replaced his tongue. _Patience._ Logan was owed patience.

“There's a small window of opportunity before the midnight guard shift. The last Brothers in the foyer for the day attend to the night guard’s confessions before they take up their posts.” Scott watched Matthew’s face for any indication his information was outdated. He knew the workings of this Abbey as a watchmaker did his clocks but two years was a lot for more than just his romantic relationships. Matthew nodded. “The way from here to the vehicle entrance is deserted. I could have you loaded into a carriage before anyone would notice.”

Logan rolled his tongue over the inside of his lower lip when he was deep in thought. Scott had noticed the unheeding movement a few times.

“These Overseers for the Conclave… they bring their pups along?”

“Personal wolfhounds are allowed and cared for in the kennels.” Scott affirmed. He liked that most about the Conclave. Some senior Overseers brought along young wolfhounds that were yet bonding with them, puppies to replace older dogs no longer suited for the field after long service. Their numbers swelled in the kennels and their happy yips permeated the air at dinnertime when the fresh scent of cooked meat ran across the yard.

Ah. Scott met Logan’s expectant gaze with a newfound sense of alarm.

There would be twice as many dogs in the kennels. Twice as many Void-sensitive noses to alert their masters if Logan stepped outside the prison block.

“I see your point.” He said unwillingly. Overseers did not doubt their dogs, they were far too well trained to bark at nothing. If there was a commotion in the kennels then the whole Abbey would be up in arms.

Matthew finished flattening the folds on the tarp over the instruments table and decided they had done all they could for one day. They were expected to meet David Alleyne at sundown and that could present more problems to iron out. Scott agreed to gather information and regroup come morning. He felt _more_ like an ass when he was forced to strap Logan down on the table again and the man no longer looked as intimidating as he did sitting up. His barrel chest showed signs of regrowing his hair. Watching it would be Logan’s only form of entertainment, second only on the scale of things worse than death to watching old paint peel from the prison walls.

“I'll bring you an audiograph on my next visit.” Scott promised. “Any preferences? Music? Books? News?”

Logan looked begrudgingly grateful that he had noted the lack of _something_ to do while he waited for them to get it together. “Anything. But if you make me listen to your diary I will feed you to a leviathan.”

Scott cracked a smile but could not laugh. Leviathans were monsters of legends. The Old Gods. They had vanished into the Void for perpetuity, thankfully too massive to breach the tears from which magic bled. At times, when his dreams thrust him deep into that world of fog and obsidian, he could see the Leviathans. They swam in the corners of his eyes, blissfully obscured from proper examination by their cryptic nature. Superstition claimed Leviathans would return through the eyes and mouths of men that described them. They would come and punish the isles for slaughtering their kin for oil and meat. Words, the scriptures said, could breathe life and give shape to myths from yesteryear. It was all horseshit. The scriptures said the same of The Witness, and yet hundreds of dock workers and factory men cursing his name at every inconvenience or that pompous little matron across the river who wrote _erotica_ about the single most vicious creature in creation had summoned The Witness beyond his pink-swathed shrines. Dark magic was required to carry anything across the threshold of World and Void.

Nonetheless, Scott was wary of talk of Leviathans.

Matthew tapped him on the shoulder before he could get lost trying to make sense of theology. “Shall we go?”

* * *

 

Matthew sat on Scott’s bed with his head against the wall and his legs crossed. Regulation boots guarded the door where they had hung their jackets on the golden hooks screwed to the oak. Their collars had been tossed aside in the excursion from door to desk to bed in the interest of comfort. Beyond the white circles, a carpet of scattered files painted a tapestry of torture and gore. Scott’s hot breath warmed his face against Matthew’s pant leg. His voice had lifted from his tongue and disappeared leaving him dry at the mouth, drum-beat headache between his temples. He hid his eyes from the light and from the silence Matthew basked in.

He knew how he felt. Hopeless. Unclean. As if every word on the vellum was cursed by association. No “ _and”, “then”, “but”,_ or conjugation safe from its effect in aiding to communicate so vividly the vivisection of a man. Any miscalculated order of words could easily overlap with Essex’s torture journal. The fear of words… or the power of words. Did it have a name? Something that was half dead language with _phobia_ tacked at the end so that _cowardice_ didn't fit so well to describe their unwillingness to _hear_ about something Logan had _lived._

Unwillingness _._

_Logan reported feeling no discomfort from the removal of fluid in his lung, he showed an unwillingness to recant until I punctured his ulnar nerve and asked again._

Scott’s grip on Matt’s shirt tightened and the hand on his head resumed gently stroking his hair. He had read out loud sixteen pages of Essex’s report before he couldn't continue. He made it through the clinically worded abstract without a hitch. It was Essex’s rambling notes and schoolboy enthusiasm as he jotted down Logan’s various responses to stimulus that shook him. He captioned the images for Matthew, and though he tried to skip the most gruesome, his friend held his hand still before he could hide them away and made him describe them in as much detail as the rest. Matthew did not want his protection. Not if it meant Scott had to carry that alone.

“I was so angry with you.”

Scott raised his head towards Matthew’s voice. A hot sting lined his eyes.

“Two years, Scott, and not a word. I was so _angry_ with you. When I heard you were coming back I swore I would never speak to you again.” Matt touched his cheek. He followed the bridge of his nose and the stern arch of his brows over to his small ears. “And then you were here, and I was _angrier_ , but I couldn't… I couldn't reject you. I couldn't turn from the smell of that stupid wax you put in your hair, or that infuriating habit you have to touch my chatelaine while we talk-- a habit that you somehow didn't lose in twenty four months. In some ways, I am still angry.”

Matthew uncrossed his legs and pulled Scott by his armpits so he could wrap his arms around his torso. Clutched in his hand was the last silvergraph Scott had described for him. Scott could not believe his own insolence, or the _audacity_ with which he had walked into the Abbey as if Jean was the only person he'd left behind, as if there were no others worth worrying about. He had left her a letter. Matthew had received no such courtesy. He struggled to keep his body still in Matt’s embrace, but there was no mistaking the tremors that wracked his chest.

“I'm sorry, I'm… I'm sorry, Matthew--"

“No.”

Matthew pulled his wet face into his shoulder and muffled his apology against his shirt. He didn't want _sorry_ , he wanted to make himself perfectly clear.

“But if you went to Tyvia to run away from this man I would forgive you once and a thousand times, Scott.”


	10. patricide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In another district, Jean Grey tries to contact the two people who will ensure Logan and Scott make it past the Abbey square without being recaptured.  
> Back in the Abbey, Scott and Matt bump into something that could be a problem... or an opportunity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one was a whole lot of fun to write. No matter how long i make chapters, it never feels like enough. I hope my writing is at least clear and exciting if brief, that's the most i can hope for

**10**  
  
DISTILLERY DISTRICT, DUNWALL  
  
_6th day, Month of High Cold, 1851_

 **  
** “We do not revere The Witness. We do not worship him. We dance for his amusement. We entertain. He throws flowers at our feet until he bores of us, and if we're lucky he'll let us fade to grey with all his gifts or we will die young while we can still be martyrs to his Mark.”

— THE WITNESS COMES  
  
Printed on the Witchmaker’s third pamphlet.

* * *

 

Jean Grey was one hundred and seventy centimeters tall and twenty-three summers old. She had long, auburn hair that ran in thick curls on curls over her back. Her face was a constellation of freckles with a Polaris of a beauty mark high on her right temple. Her build—called pudgy and awkward since childhood by envious little girls who had learned too young hurting others could garner status from playground to ballroom—was strong and beautifully defined. Her soft, prominent curves could flex to purpose. She moved with a ballerina’s grace and a surgeon’s confidence, green eyes ever facing straight ahead. Her height, complexion, and age were on the City Watch’s record because her parents had reported her missing twice since she had moved away.  

Had she known her adult life would not benefit from overprotective scrutiny she might have been a more difficult child. Someone her parents would be glad to release from their nest. Instead she was their only daughter, grown cold and distant because she couldn't explain who she had become.

 _Ma, Baba, I resent the money in our pockets, but I'll make use of the education it bought me. Some of the kindest people I've met you would call criminals. I do not write, I will not visit. I am proud of who I am, and I love you too much to risk knowing for sure if_ **_you_ ** _would be._

_Ma. Baba… I married a good man and a killer. Who I am can reconcile one and the other._

A voice like cream and sugar pulled her from the silk house she had dreamt out of the Void. She fell through the translucent floors, catching on ribbons that whispered against her skin too quietly to hear before she slipped from one onto the next. They wrapped around her like threads on a rag doll, hugging her wrists, waist, and ankles before they were pulled taut, painfully, and she was cut free from their grasp and fell unceremoniously onto a black slab.

The hard surface scraped her knees as she stood to face the man with the black eyes and the voice like molasses. He wore a smile that was sugarcube white and a long silver trench coat and boots over a skintight black suit. Brown hair fell softly over his ears and in a smattering of stubble along his jaw. The Witness seemed human enough at first glance. The pallor of his skin ashen but not unnatural, but his eyes— called such by placement on his face alone as he had no irises or sclera, were testament to the creature’s _otherness._ Lined by his dark lashes were two slices of the abyss glossed in Jean’s reflection and the artificial light that made the Void bearable.

“ _Jean_ , Jean, Jean. Are you still of the belief I trade dreams for my company? I am not ungrateful for the entertainment, but it _was_ unnecessary. If you're meant to see me, you will. You have precious little time already, my dear Miss Grey. Don't waste it.” The Witness said, smiling.

“I have a message for the Witchmaker.” Jean told him stiffly. This place beyond dreams was always disconcerting. It welcomed her too easily, like she belonged. The _chill_ a lucky few described in their memoirs felt to her more like the heat left behind in scorched earth. ”I tried the usual channels and I couldn't find him. He moved all his people after they captured Logan.”

“It wasn't Logan he moved them for.” There was a private joke in The Witness’ widening smile that Jean wasn't privy to. “But move he did. You think I know where?”

Swirls of pink smoke ran spirals around his feet when they touched the ground. It was the same color of Logan’s Mark when it lit up with the old magic. The jagged lines and sharp curves on her husband’s hand belonged to this man. He had Marked Logan, the Witchmaker, and dozens of others. Through him flowed all the magic of the Void and, if the Abbey was to be believed, all the evil too. Jean thought the cryptic creature was _boyish_. Logan had always spoken of him as a nuisance, not a patron or threat. And yet the Witness was old. Older than her, older than the Isles, older than the old magic, and his curiosity for mortal affairs was fickle and drifting. He had to be entertained. Jean kept her chin up.

“You know everything. If you give Magnus my message things will play out well. Wouldn't you enjoy it if one of your Marked escaped the Abbey with the help of another?”

“It is always enjoyable when two of my Marked meet...” He trailed off and she knew she had caught his attention.  “Alright, my dear Jean. I will run your errand.”

Jean’s stomach dropped from a steep edge and she doubled over as she woke, nearly losing the previous night’s dinner as her consciousness was ripped from the Void. She took off her nightcap and the first few buttons of her gown. A lump in her throat made it harder to breathe. She had gone down too deeply and roots had grown from her mind into obsidian.

Laura trembled as she touched her little hand to her knee. The young girl shared Jean’s bed every day since her father’s capture and nightmares had plagued them both. But this wasn't a nightmare, it was good news.

“Laura,” Jean wrapped her arms around her and buried her face into the soft baby smell of her hair. “I had a dream.”

“A bad dream?” She asked. She felt so small in Jean’s arms when she was scared.

“No, sweetheart. The best. We are going to help your father. Scott will get him out of the Abbey and daddy’s friend Magnus will get him out of the city.”

“Magnus?” She breathed. Overseers had hurt her and taken her father. Magnus hurt Overseers— thus he was a hero. Wonderment kindled her voice. “He will take us too.”

“Of course. You, Logan, Scott, and I.” Jean counted to four on Laura’s fingers and poked her palm. She giggled and closed her hand into a fist.

“Scott’s gonna come?”

Jean kissed her daughter’s forehead and lied back so Laura could tuck her body into her side as she gathered the blankets to cover them. Scott had two choices and, if she still knew the man he was, he had already made the right one. He would free Logan and leave the Abbey. He would join them past Munroe Bridge and onwards to the Witchmaker’s small but ultimately _safe_ haven. There was no future for him in the Order if he stayed— unless he wanted to be branded as a heretic and exiled from the capital or executed, as most Overseers who failed to uphold Essex’s new Order had been of late.

“He will have to.”

* * *

 

Scott woke from unsteady dreams and the smell of wilting lavender petals lingering in his nose, trademark of the Void. He turned his head and faced his reflection on a picture frame. Matthew had not joined him in dreams, he had drawn the pattern his fingers followed in Scott’s hair so many times that they were semi-permanent crop circles disrupting chestnut waves.

“Logan is right. You can't stay here after this.”

Matthew knew he was awake from some slight rhythmic change in the pace of his heart and breathing. It was unlike him to jerk Scott from dream to reality so quickly, but he needed to be direct to be understood.

“Don't be silly.” Scott protested. He had moved from Matthew’s lap to his chest and the buttons on his shirt had marked his cheek like kisses. “The Conclave is the perfect opportunity to bring up Logan’s case once he's safe. No one will agree to pursue him...”

“Or blame you.” Matthew finished his thought for him. “You are being dense and overly optimistic. You are relying on hundreds of years of tradition being abandoned overnight. The Abbey’s morals serve the Abbey’s interests, not those of the people.”

“Matthew!” Scott said, bewildered by his candor. Matthew was a reformist but he had never heard him speak so cynically of their Order.

Matthew rolled them over onto their sides. He grabbed the front of Scott’s shirt collar and tugged.

“You've already made peace with what you _think_ is the worst case scenario, haven't you? You think they will brand you Heretic and exile you from the Order to be forgotten by your Brothers and by history. We don't play that game anymore, Scott. Your years of service are meaningless to the High Overseer. Witches have what he really wants. They have information and _power_ . Your brand will be _traitor_ and he will have you beaten and fed to the hounds.” Matthew’s voice was thick with grief, as if those things had already been and Scott was a corpse in his pallet. He searched the man’s face from his brow to his chin. Perhaps it _was_ real for his pensive friend. Matthew was raised in the Oracular Order even if it hadn't been his calling. He had _visions_ he wasn't supposed to speak off within Abbey walls unless to report to the Sisters. If this was one and Scott had dug a hole that would become his grave…

“What would you have me do, Matt?” He said, exhausted. The life he could have had with Jean was lost, a career within the Order no longer viable or even something he wanted. He knew it. This was already his worst case scenario. This was exile.

“I would have you promise to run. Run and _live_.”

Matthew kissed him. It was a shy press of lips, as the first time they’d shared one. His friend tentatively searched for his mouth, following his cheek until Scott turned his head and inhaled sharply through his nose— again, like the first time— both shocked and excited. It was overly brief and left Scott chasing Matthew’s mouth when they parted. He remembered being embarrassed by his eagerness when they were sixteen, but now he was ravenous to continue.

He was starved for Matthew’s affection, but he could not further blur the line between friend and lover. It would hurt too much to part from him if he crossed it. Matthew was asking him to leave the Abbey, leave _him_ , and he had sealed Scott into that promise with a kiss.

When Logan was free, Scott would follow.

Matthew’s brow pinched. He stroked his thumb over his upper lip and came away with dried flakes of red.

“Scott, your nose is bleeding.”

“Huh?”

He wiped the back of his hand beneath his nose and there was a fresh smear of blood from his knuckles to his wrist. He tilted his head back and felt liquid rush down his throat so quickly he coughed involuntarily.  

“My nose is bleeding.” He repeated.

“Well, what are you waiting— Get up. Don't let blood drain into your throat! I know this isn't your first nosebleed.”

Matthew made him sit up, pinched his nose, and bent him over the carpet so he would not swallow his own blood. As Matthew remembered, this wasn't his first nosebleed and they were a frequent enough occurrence that he kept napkins and disinfectant in the nightstand. Two years his room was left empty but no one had disturbed that.

If the light sensitivity and the migraines weren't enough, Scott suffered from dryness in his nose.He got bleeds less and less as he got older, but he could expect it at least once a month with certainty.

“I am taking you to the physician.”

“What? It's just a nosebleed, I get them all the time.”

“Unfortunately for you, you took a beating in Tyvia, so I am not going to assume anything until it's sure.” Matthew had been careful not to aggravate his bruises but he tapped the bandage over them as a reminder.

Scott cringed away and blood spilled over his lip as he released the pressure. Matthew tutted and hit him over the head with a napkin he then pressed beneath his nostrils. He could always argue more, but he had been enough of a thorn in Matthew’s side and they needed to get up to meet David regardless. Visiting Josh on their way would make no difference.

“Alright.” He said nasaly, making Matthew laugh. He nudged him with his shoulder. “We will go see the doctor.”

* * *

 

The medical wing was located on the first floor as no one requiring of Joshua Foley’s medical experience should have to take the stairs or wait for the lift if they were injured in the field. Foley was the head physician’s apprentice, and in his absence his mentor had delegated control of the medical wing to him. Foley, like his good friend and classmate Mr. Alleyne, was a favorite of Essex. To even the untrained eye, their age was clearly a factor heavily influencing his regard for them. The young could yet be molded into something suitable for the future he imagined for the Abbey. Scott and Matthew, though early in their years, lost his interest when they developed morals that were not in perfect alignment with their High Overseer’s.

Scott insisted they dress in their uniforms before leaving the room because it would not be proper for them to be seen stripped down to their undershirts by a boy with the High Overseer’s ear. Hygiene and presentation was of political importance with Overseers from every corner of the Empire roaming the headquarters, devouring perceived discourtesies as an embarrassment to their leader. Essex had left Scott with a toy to occupy him while he juggled the emissaries from Morley and Serkonos. He had to prove it was working. Essex would not need to hover anxiously over him to know what he was up to.

Scott had stopped bleeding by the time his jacket was back on with all its buttons but he could not dissuade Matthew from visiting Foley. Matthew was better with words: if they were truly on the same page and Scott planned to run away with Logan by week’s end then it would help immensely if he acquired another dose of his powders from Foley. Stars only knew when they would have the resources for Jean to mix up another batch while they were fugitives, and he would be of help to no one if he was a ghost of himself without medication. They could convince the young student that Scott would be too busy tending to the High Overseer’s prisoner to visit the medical wing weekly for his dosage.

Travelling the few floors between Scott’s room and the medic proved an informative trip. The Overseers from Morley and Serkonos were settling into the spare rooms that would be home to them until after the Conclave. Scott and Matt hurried to avoid making any unwanted friends. The foreign Overseers were happy to make conversation, as the smallest rumors could be spun into tumultuous scandals to make the Conclave something of note beyond the usual politics. They walked at an orderly pace that meant business and were thankfully ignored as they made their way into the less populated physician’s rooms.

Matthew stopped him before he could cross into Foley’s office through the door left ajar. There was a sign with his name hastily scribbled over the primary physician’s in Foley’s handwriting. It looked as though it would slip out of place if Scott breathed on it. The sign on the frosted glass wasn't of Matthew’s concern, but what he strained to hear by cocking his head was. Scott’s eyes narrowed and he stepped back to hug the wall by the door. If Matthew had overheard something too low for Scott’s ears to follow then he wanted to be sure it was safe to proceed.

“What do you hear?” He whispered.

“Two voices. Foley and Alleyne. They are talking about…” Matthew turned his head and Scott watched his eyes widen behind his shades. “Come!”

He grabbed Scott’s wrist and led him inside swiftly and quietly. Foley’s office was furnished by a desk and three chairs and stood empty of anyone except their intrusion. Diagrams of bone and muscle hung on the wall, outlining symptoms of common ailments. He had a silvergraph machine by the door that led into the examination room, one like Essex must have used to document the horrors he had inflicted on Logan. Foley, one could only hope, used it towards a less chilling purpose.

Scott could hear the voices that eluded him outside. Indeed, he recognized it to be Foley and his friend Alleyne. The two of them had gone to Whitecliff together, been in the same classes during basic, and were known to be close as a result much like Matthew and himself. It was not _odd_ that they should spend time together.

Except. Scott could hear what they were saying and at first it did not make a lick of sense.

“She has been there for weeks. If it wasn't for Murdock… The things they would have done to her.” It was Alleyne’s voice, angrier than Scott had ever heard the boy.

“They would have more to fear from her, David. Noriko is strong.” Foley aimed for reassuring, but missed the mark.  

“I _know_. But there's only so much you can do chained down in a jail cell. You should have heard them, Josh. You're lucky not to sleep in the barracks.”

“You would be lucky too if you had taken Essex’s offer. He wanted to bring you inside.”

“I hear more in the barracks— and I will be _damned_ before I let that monster draw me any closer than he's already tried.”

Matthew and Scott shot up sharply. Now there was something they had never heard from Alleyne. Not Essex’s perfect pet, not his favorite student—not him, he would never say something like that. But maybe things were not as they seemed in the light of Essex’s blessed image.

“She knows we are posted here. She must think we have abandoned her.” There was a sound, a fist slamming into wood. “We practically have.”

“Essex will send all but the Overseers from out of the capital to the yard. They get piss drunk every year, no one will notice a thing if we slip by with Noriko.”

Matthew breathed through his teeth. “That's the girl in the cell next to Logan.”

Scott gasped. “Are you certain?”

His friend nodded. David and Joshua. Noriko and the Witchmaker. That complicated things, but it was more an _opportunity_. Scott’s naivete had its limits. He understood without a doubt that Alleyne and Foley were planning an escape. They had already been more helpful than anything they’d found in Essex’s notes, providing a rough outline of where most people of interest would be on the day of the Conclave.

“You know I am going to be named Vice Overseer during the Conclave ceremony. With the head physician in Tyvia, Essex will want you present. We cannot _slip away_ . We are a _vital presence_ .” Alleyne said in a voice to mock his mentor’s. It did not surprise Scott that _he_ would be named Vice Overseer over men years his seniors. He had watched Essex soak in the air he breathed as creatures of the night must blood. He was a father finally proud of the mirror image he thought projected onto his son.

Oh. To see the look on his face if he found out his precious prodigy hated his guts.

Scott made a decision he would not regret. He walked to the examination room and pulled apart the divider separating it from the office. Alleyne and Foley stood scant feet from each other, twins look of shock and fear mingled in their young faces. They could not disguise that they thought Scott overheard their conversation and they were in real trouble.

“Brother Summers!” Joshua said amiably. “What brings you to see me? I hope you are not injured.”

He cleared some files on the stretcher and motioned for Scott to take their place as he hid them hastily beneath his lab coat.

“Please, please. Have a seat. I was just finishing up with Da— Brother Alleyne. He is all nerves with the Conclave, we all could use a little poppy.” Foley continued, looking more and more like _his_ nerves were fraying. He gave Alleyne a look that begged him to leave, and leave quickly, but when the boy attempted to cut past Scott with a nod and a bow he was met with his unyielding form and Matthew’s cane lodged in the space left by Scott’s body.

“Brothers, please.” Matthew said, filling in the space his cane had made and sending Alleyne back a few misguidedly frightened steps. There was a smile on his face. “If we are all going to commit treason we might as well do it together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your support. You guys keep me invested in this.


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